Huawei Watch eyes premium consumers at not so premium price

Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, in partnership with domestic e-commerce player Flipkart, on Monday launched its first wearable device, the Huawei Watch, for the India market priced at ₹22,999 and said that it was targeted at premium consumers

Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, in partnership with domestic e-commerce player Flipkart, on Monday launched its first wearable device, the Huawei Watch, for the India market priced at Rs 22,999 and said that it was targeted at premium consumers

Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, in partnership with domestic e-commerce player Flipkart, on Monday launched its first wearable device, the Huawei Watch, for the India market priced at ₹22,999 and said that it was targeted at premium consumers.

The new watch, priced competitively, will rival Motorola's second generation Moto 360, recently launched Samsung Gear S2, Asus Zenwatch 2, the older LG Urbane and the Apple Watch, most of which are priced in the same price range.

However, the company said that it was not focussed on gaining quick market share and added that the device was a watch first device which essentially means that Huawei focussed on making a watch first and then putting technology onto it.

"This product is for premium consumers and right now we are not looking to gain market share quickly," P Sanjeev, director of sales at Huawei and Honor's consumer business, told HT when asked about smartwatches' low contribution of sales in the wearables category in India.

He added that the watch will be manufactured at Huawei's global facility and only "a few thousand units" will be brought into the country keeping in line with the "premium consumer" strategy although he did not reveal any sales target figures.

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The watch, available in two sizes (42 and 44 mm) will also support iOS (8.2 and higher) and will run Android Wear. It can also accept phone calls on the device (an update recently released by Google and available in Asus Zenwatch 2) - a feature unavailable in Moto 360 and Samsung Gear S2. The device also has a heart-rate sensor which is absent in the Zenwatch 2.

Protected by Sapphire Glass, the watch will sport a 1.4-inch full circle AMOLED display with 400x400 screen resolution and will have a pixel density of 286 ppi. The stainless steel build device will draw power from a 300mAh battery and will support Bluetooth 4.1 and WiFi. The watch, which will support anything above KitKat, is expected to come with a six-axis motion detector sensor, gyroscope and accelerometer along with other sensors.

However, the new watch is not much of a deviation in terms of core computing power. Like other smartwatches available, it will run a 1.2 GHz processor along with 512 MB RAM and will have an internal memory of 4 GB.

Sanjeev also said that the company was looking to bring the Huawei TalkBand 3 to the Indian market soon but did not give any specific timeline. The new health band was launched during Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year. "The product is not yet ready but we will bring it as soon as possible," Sanjeev said.

The watch will come with 40 watch faces and support several third party applications along with core Android Wear apps. The device will go on sale starting Monday afternoon.