"Chain Dynamics" of GBA Enterprises | From Zero to Hero, The Miraculous Resurrection of Honor

"To become Huawei's strongest rival in the world, set your goal of transcending, even overthrowing Huawei." This was the blessing from Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, when Honor parted ways with its parent company.

Rewind to November 17, 2020, Huawei, crippled by supply chain issues, announced to sell 100% of its Honor shares, as the consortium officially spun off its mid-range smartphone business to ensure Honor's own survival. But from day one of its independence, Honor had to face one of the biggest challenges of the entire industry all on its own.

At that time, chip shortages, coupled with the lack of distribution channels and supply chain disruptions, rendered Honor virtually "voiceless" in the smartphone market. In April 2021, the domestic market share of Honor plummeted to 3%, a far cry from its peak of 16.7% market share.

Rather than being paralyzed by these challenges, Honor soon charted its course to success. In three years, Honor successfully built its own platform capabilities and established its own ecosystem.

Compared to other industries, the smartphone industry heavily relies on full-chain cooperation across industrial and supply chains. Fortunately, the Pearl River Delta region, where Honor headquarters in, boasts a complete smartphone industrial chain. 95% of the parts required for a single smartphone can be sourced and assembled within a one-hour commute.

This geographical advantage wasn't enough though. To achieve even faster delivery, Honor leveraged 5G+ industrial internet to create a full-chain "pull-style precise distribution" logistics solution. In its line-side warehouse, they implemented remote and cross-floor unmanned distribution. On the production line, they refined the granularity of "pull-style precise distribution" of materials at an hourly level, based on production demands. Through this "one-stop" logistics solutions, Honor slashed its full-chain delivery time from 21 hours to 11 hours.

Apart from efficiency improvements, product "consistency" remained Honor’s top priority. Even a 1% error rate translates to 100% disappointment for a customer who receives a defective product. To address this, Honor employed "5G+ visualized quality inspection," which resolved issues like human errors, missing components, and incorrect assembly that plagued manual quality control in the smartphone industry.

Furthermore, to boost the competitive edge of upstream and downstream partners, and drive digital transformation across the supply chain, Honor shared its self-developed production line equipment and IT application systems with its industrial chain partners. This strategy not only helped partners improve efficiency in equipment utilization and coordination, but allowed Honor to monitor product quality across multiple factory production lines in real-time.

With this innovative, empowered industry chain collaboration, Honor broke through the increasingly competitive smartphone market. In 2023, Honor topped domestic Android smartphone shipment rankings. This momentum continued into the first quarter of 2024, when Honor claimed the top spot in overall domestic smartphone shipments.

Honor's journey from rock bottom to market leader is a testament to its ability to soar against headwinds. However, it's clear that these current achievements are far from its ultimate goal. As Honor CEO Zhao Ming said, "Even a clumsy bird can fly over Mount Everest." In the progressively fierce smartphone market, Honor has more battles to win as it marches ahead the premium and global market.

出品：南财国际传播中心 21新媒体中心 创意互动中心

策划统筹：于晓娜 丁青云

内容统筹：谭婷 张楠

责任编辑：李香香

执行统筹：黄欣然 

设计统筹：林军明

视频统筹：白宇航

监制：施诗

英文翻译&配音：李莹亮

海外运营监制: 黄燕淑

海外运营内容统筹: 黄子豪

运营支持：曾静娇

审校：张晔 黄志明