The new Huawei P40 handsets will hit the shelves, despite the fact we cant go into the stores to check them out, due to Coronavirus.
Over 90% of the 150,000 strong Chinese workforce have now returned to work, following the mass quarantine instigated.
However, experts have said that the interest for the handsets will be low outside of China, and not just due to the pandemic.
At present a lot of spending is going on Laptops, PC’s and tablets, that is if any spending is happening at all.
“Smartphones are not a priority and certainly not premium ones,” shared by Marta Pinto of market research firm IDC.
“People’s consumption confidence is falling because they are more concerned about buying things like groceries and whether they will keep their jobs.
“Even if you are still buying, because you’re working from home, you’ll probably purchase a laptop and monitor. Or because kids need to go to school online, you might buy them a tablet or Chromebook.”
We already know that handset sales are slowing down massively, and this is having detrimental effects for companies worldwide.
Huawei revealed these new handsets not through a big budget event as is their normal style, but simply using a livestream.
Another major drawback for the new P40 range is that it will lack Google services – included in this are; YouTube, Maps and Play Store apps, and the Google Assistant.
All due to the US trade ban, which is still in place, this makes the handsets very difficult to sell outside of China, where Android is not the only option.
Huawei remains the world’s second bestselling handset-maker, but had once aimed to overtake Samsung before the end of 2019.
Founder Ren Zhengfei speaking with the Wall Street Journal about boosting its wider research and development budget by $5.8bn (£4.8bn) this year, taking it to more than $20bn. And part of that is being spent on building up its own library of apps.
“In markets outside of China, we don’t see significant [smartphone] growth,” he added.
“We are taking measures to address that.”
Interestingly last year Huawei ignored the US trade ban and continues with their plans to release the P30 handsets with Android.
The new P40 will come in 3 variants, the P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro+, an awful lot of time was spent on those names.
Both versions of the Pro handsets will host a 6.58 inch display, whereas the standard P40 will be 6.1 inch.
All models will support 5G, however the Pro versions will have stronger camera arrays, meaning if you are partial to taking a good snap you may want to steer toward them.
The P40 Pro+ has a 10x optical zoom periscope lens. and can achieve 100x digital zoom, matching the Samsung S20, although Huawei claim to produce a better shot.
Huawei have also introduced artificial intelligence to remove undesired objects and eliminate reflections in glass and a smart assistant summoned by saying “Hey Celia”, which can identify flowers, and other objects.
The P40 and P40 Pro are due to be on sale from the 7th April, and start from £742 whereas the P40 Pro+ won’t be arriving till June with the rather pricey figure of £1,299.
