Apple and Samsung Electronics are not the only ones with smartphones targeting higher end consumers. China’s Huawei Technologies unveiled their latest phone this week, the Mate S.
Making its debut at Europe’s biggest electronic show in Berlin, the Mate S has a 5.5-inch display, a 13-megapixel rear camera, and fingerprint security.
The smartphone is said to be the first one to include a Force Touch display, able to distinguish if you did a light tap or a deep press. Apple’s iPhone is expected to have the same Force Touch technology when it upgrades to the 6S and 6S+.
Research firm Gartner announced that Huawei is third in the smartphone market. They overtook Lenovo and hope to be the first Chinese phone company to reach more than 100 million smartphones sales this year.
But the race proves to be difficult for them with the top two contenders leading far ahead. Samsung had 21.9 percent and Apple at 14.6 percent of the second quarter market. Huawei went from 5.4 percent to 7.8 percent in the first quarter.
The CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, Richard Yu was the presenter of Mate S in Germany. The Mate S phone is priced at 649 euros (US$732), and there’s a premium version for 748 euros.
The Mate S will soon be available in at least thirty countries, including China, Israel, Germany, France, Japan, and Spain. It can be pre-ordered from September 15 in Western Europe.
