CRISP. caught up with Huawei’s Winston Eavis – fresh off a socially distanced smartphone launch – to talk about the Huawei Mate 40 Pro, the power of Petal Search and Tiktok superstars.

 

 

Hi Winston, thanks so much for taking the time to speak to us today. Thought we’d start with a broad one, what sets the Mate 40 apart from competitors in the space?

It’s a good question. I think it’s a couple of things, and I think actually it’s a testament to the devices that have gone before that actually the Mate 40 was quite a tough device to bring out.

We’ve introduced super-charging in the Mates over the years, we’ve introduced incredible night photography so thinking back to the Mate 20, when we grow that in the way we integrate AI and the way that created the night mode…it just kind of blew everyone away.

And actually, it’s good because the industry has responded and now a lot of people have a ‘night mode’ and a lot of people have supercharging, and that’s okay, we’re here to move the industry on a bit.

So in terms of still photography, I’m not going to say we’ve […] come to the zenith of smartphone photography, but it’s pretty good, and I think it’s good enough for most people to use as their everyday camera already – so some of the optimisations we’ve made are pretty good, but video was the thing that for us was an opportunity, something that we’re all using more and more. 

 

 

So we just did our first Tiktok campaign, which was weird and wonderful and we enjoyed it, but it’s not just TikTok.

It’s Instagram Stories, it’s Snapchat, and actually it’s not just about sharing the great photo of your breakfast, it’s about – particularly at the moment – “what are you doing?”

What do you want to do? What is your fitness routine, what’s your exercise? What are you seeing out of your window – all of the small things you can see in video, you can convey a lot better, so video was the big focus, and that’s where – if people are living their lives and […] showing the world their life through video, we had to work on it.

So we did a huge amount of work on it, […] and now bringing in this nice kind of integration, the synchronicity of…we’ve had beautiful optics for years, Leica for four years now, the optics are amazing, but actually, it is partnering that with the AI to do things like the tracking shots, image stabilization, the AIS and OIS working together in there, that becomes really exciting to see. 

And then, behind that, the power is of the chipset, so…it’s a pretty powerful piece of kit, again, we’ve been investing a huge amount in developing that Kirin chipset for 10 years, they’re certainly in recent years, the Kirin chipsets have gone beyond where the rest of the industry is, this latest one obviously is beyond where the competition is now, even on the 5nm wafer.

That innovation is incredible, so that gives us the ability and the confidence to push out the rest of the innovation further. So yeah, we’re pretty excited about it.

 

 

And the Mate series has always been where the innovation lay in Huawei releases, does this continue with the Mate 40 / Pro?

Yeah, it really does. And it’s really interesting, obviously, before this year, I’d go to China three or four times a year, and you’d see just a different perspective over there of what Huawei does.

JD is a big online retailer, they’ve just sold 100 million devices, they tell us they’ve just done a big light show about it with drones, and so it makes the big deal there.

Here [in the UK], it’s kind of a bit more…P and Mate, similar sort of price point and the same sort of innovation, but actually for the wider business, because we always introduce that Kirin chipset innovation, generally just before at IFA…which we haven’t been able to do this year, but it’s still an incredibly popular release.

The display – can you talk a little bit about that? That screen-to-body ratio is becoming quite ridiculous…

Yeah, it’s getting big, but it’s interesting, again, it’s putting it in context of the Mate Series and also the industry – so we started bringing in the curved display a number of generations ago on the Mate 20, on the Mate 30 Pro, which I know didn’t introduce here until a bit later, […] but the screen on that almost felt like it kind of curved off the edges around the back, incredibly immersive but that also was a bit weird in terms of functionality […] so it was a beautiful thing to look at, but..the actual usability was tricky. 

So I think we found the perfect balance with this now, and I think 88% [screen-to-body ratio] is down a little bit from where it was. You still use everything fine, it works beautifully as well as the gesture control, that’s a big thing with it.

So it’s just, again, small innovations, but just kind of tweaking and perfecting where we can get the model to.

 

How important do you feel that 5G is today to consumers, and going to be moving forward?

I think it’s interesting, I think there was so much hype about 5G and we almost did ourselves a disservice a little bit because we made it become something in consumers’ minds, it’s almost something more than what it is, which is just really fast mobile telecommunication.

So it’s become the buzzword or all sorts of stuff that is obviously nothing to do with the basic functionality of just using the phone really well. 

I think actually, the truth will be when we get…as we saw with 4G and 3G is when you get that critical mass of early adopters on board, and then they start to do just the very simple thing of just showing their mates […] and that’s when it becomes quite interesting and it’s not far off.

Pretty much every device we released this year has been 5G. Obviously, from next year, the same will be the case. The experience is pretty good. It works great.

I think it’s just going to take that little bit of time to get consumers up to speed and just really working at what they need it for.

The other factor that’s going to accelerate it is lockdown because I find it difficult working from home, but […] if you’ve got five of you in a shared house all sharing in the same Wi-Fi hotspot, that’s pretty miserable.

So actually with 5G coming on board, I’ve been away for different parts of this year and just used 5G because WiFi’s rubbish, I say we’ll see that a lot more.

 

Do you still have that support from the networks?

Yeah, we do, and […] it’s been really interesting this year because we brought the P40 in, and actually we had a couple of networks on board at launch, but some of the others were struggling a bit and there they weren’t quite convinced about HMS and about the App Gallery and about how this would work, and some of the networks are really cautious and that’s just the way they are. 

Some of those guys then saw what we brought in – things like Petal Search in particular helped – just the simplicity of just to be able to go into one thing and get what you need. 

That was important for them, and then after six weeks to two months we had all the networks on board with P Series, and then actually they all started to see that people get it, particularly early adopters.

So when we started talking to the networks about Mate 40, they pretty much just said, “Look, we’re in. That’s good.” We started pre-order with a couple of them, we’ll have a couple more coming on board as well, but…yeah, it’s been a good journey. 

I’ll be honest, there was a bit of doubt…was a bit of a challenge, but with all of the networks now biting your arm off for the latest phone. That’s pretty good. That’s where we want to be.

 

 

You touched on Petal Search a little bit – it would be really good to understand the efforts to grow integration and the development of the App Gallery.

Petal Search is amazing, and it’s one of those things that actually…you almost don’t realise how amazing it is until you get it and you start playing around with it, and then they talk to you about it, and then you kinda go “oh, I get it, so it’s actually not that, it’s actually this.” So to build that from the ground up in pretty much a year to 18 months is pretty good.

I think now the nice thing is we’re already starting to see kind of the way that Petal Search can integrate itself into our gallery, obviously all the apps in App Gallery are surfaced in Petal Search anyway, so they’re all cross-compatible, but it’s nice to be able to go into the market for the consumers and say, “pretty much whatever you want, it’s there.”

Also to be able to go to developers, content providers and say, “Look, we would love to have you on board. There are hundreds of thousands of apps already on board, you want to be in there, but… Actually, what flavor do you want?”

Do you want to come in with full HMS integration, you want to come in through quick apps, which is something in Petal Search…

And that’s why a lot of them want to do so, it just gives us options at the moment…this year is all about resourcefulness and flexibility, so we’ve been playing every option we’ve got.

 

Are there any apps that still prove elusive or that you really want to get on there?

There’s not many others actually, and there’s not many that you can’t get any experience, so the huge amount of apps you can get through Petal Search is amazing. 

I think some of the banking apps, we recognize that’s a bit of a challenge now, or a lot of those you can get the online experience through Petal Search, but understandably, with the amount of back-end security and then of all of the rigour that those guys have to go through, that’s a challenge.

But actually that’s why we’ve started looking very deliberately at Starling Bank and Curve, and we’re looking at the moment, to Revolut and Monzo say with those guys, because actually for them, they have a lot of security actually, they’re pretty similar in that way, but they’re just more open to it because if you perhaps a stack developer, then you get it…

But yeah, it’s lots of progress that we’re talking about it every day on the banking stuff, that’s, it’s coming together pretty well.

 

Moving a little bit on from solely mobiles, what’s the ‘1 + 8 + N’ strategy with Huawei devices expanding beyond that focus? How does it differ from other manufacturers moving into connected appliances?

I think there’s a couple of things we’re different to the other Chinese OEMs, but I think we’re also different… Look at Samsung, they have been amazing in this field, they’ve done a huge amount of connected living stuff.

Apple are a bit more focused and a bit more closed off, and they are very concentrated on what they can do and how they can do it, and that’s a different approach as well. 

I think we’ve brought elements of all of that, but also kind of our own way, we are deliberately being really open, particularly with the ‘+ N’ and so…there’ll be very little, if any Huawei technology necessarily going into a lot of that, as I say, and it’s really just going to be the convenience and connectivity and a bit of the benefits you saw, the toothbrush which will be on sale on the Huawei Store. 

So that’s a good example of where we can get to right now, but yeah. That’s kind of exciting.

Also the kind of deals we’ve got coming up with Samsonite and Karsher, these kinds of guys globally, that makes it really exciting and they’re being completely fully integrated and open will be good.

I think the other thing that I’d like to think for our ‘+ 8’ in particular, we’re really focusing on the stuff that we can do really well. I think we’re very conscious that certainly now, once you put the Huawei name on the side of something, it probably means something, particularly to Huawei owners.

It’s got an intrinsic value when you expect a certain level of performance, so we’re really going to bring in things – particularly in the ‘+ 8’  space that we feel are going to be up to our standards. 

The stuff we’re bringing in, whatever it is – the over-ear headphones are a really good example – terrifying market come into by actually in years and years ago in my back of my PR agency world, one of our clients has Bose, I loved it, and I spent months and years talking about the innovation, the R and D of Mr. Bose, and it’s awesome.

And then you certainly find yourself going up against it… You’ve got to be good, you’re going to be fairly focused, and we’re going to really focus on some of the things where you can make a difference and the things that will be as good as the other stuff we brought to market.

 

 

What do you think the key growth opportunities are going forward, do you think it’s very much geared around this strategy?

Yeah, I think it is. I think actually the biggest great opportunities are probably not only in hardware, because I think certainly the plus and is a massive great opportunity, but also in software and services.

So we’ve brought in Huawei Music, Huawei Video – it’s bundled into the latest devices, the P40 and the Mates, it’s all on there, which is great, and you can just sign in and then get your free trials. 

We’re not driving that really commercially yet, it’s not the right time. I think we’ve got a big install base, and I want to make sure they get familiar with it and start to understand it, and back to the Freebuds Studio (picture above) example, coming into the global music market, and that’s all a kind of tough, but again, we’ve done it in a way that is we think the best experience. 

So we looked at various different ways of trying to do it, almost do it ourselves, and then we realize that’s totally not what we do, where it’s also not feasible. 

So we went to Universal and Sony Music and Warner Brothers and just said, “this is what we want to do.” And they said, “Yeah, okay, come on board.”

That’s going to be massive. I think then we’re going to be very careful about the way that we commercialize it and bring that to market, but I do think that building the install base we’ve already got, that’s a great opportunity to provide some proper differentiation as well.

 

 

Finally, what’s the most exciting thing for you coming out of Huawei in the next couple of months?

Yeah, actually yesterday was the last day I talked about the ‘Golden Weekend’. The traffic to our Huawei site has been awesome, we’ve only been going six months and got hundreds of thousands of people a day. It was up about four times on what we’ve ever seen before. 

Coming in not just to get deals, but also just to see what else is available, so that gives it a huge amount of confidence in where we can get to. 

So that’s a bit of it. I think the other bit is going to be how we drive out more of this ‘+8’, because we’re just beginning the journey with stuff like Watch Fit (above), it’s the one we put on TikTok with Holly H.

Yeah, that’s been really good. And actually, that’s also quite a new audience because obviously, we’ve had lots of devices in the lower end of our smartphone tiering, but actually as a proper value or wearable offering, never had anything like the Watch Fit, so that’s going to be exciting. But that will be the CRISP., cool thing for Christmas.

Thanks Winston!

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro is now available to buy from the Huawei Store.