Magic9 invites Alai, Honor will not be a substitute this time

Glory launched an attack.

On September 28, Honor released three flagship models of the Magic9 series in Beijing. Not only does it invite ARRI for imaging, bringing film aesthetics and professional creative processes to mobile imaging for the first time, it also has all-round configurations, but the price is almost the lowest in its class.

This is equivalent to the Magic9 series tearing a hole in the price defense line of competitors, and also brings good market feedback.Honor CEO Li Jian was told during an interview that half an hour after the launch, e-commerce sales across all platforms increased by 194% compared to the same period last year as the previous generation flagship series.

He was a little surprised and calculated: “Almost three times?”, and then he felt happy.

In my opinion, Honor has bet on three things right this year: movie-level images, cost-effectiveness, and AI.

Let’s talk about images first.Android flagships continue to seek cooperation with camera manufacturers, such as “Xiaomi + Leica”, “vivo + Zeiss”, and “OPPO + Hasselblad”. They are all trying to compare the size and pixels of mobile phone lenses, but Honor is trying to learn color correction from movie makers. It found Alais, a company that supplies cameras to Hollywood, and wanted to make a “handheld movie camera” that ordinary people could produce blockbusters directly.

Glory Image Creator Han Han Source: Tang Chen on-site shooting

Honor is trying to elevate the imaging capabilities of its mobile phones to the creative level to highlight its differentiation from its competitors.Han Han was invited as the “Glory Image Creator”, and his identity as a director is also strengthening the outside world’s recognition of his qualifications.

Magic 9 Pro Max is the year’s fully equipped imaging flagship. In terms of image quality, color, sound and professional expansion capabilities, it is all aiming to “go directly to post-production after shooting”: the interface is redone according to the logic of the Arri movie camera, the parameters are fine-tuned, the framing is 2.39:1 ultra-wide format, and the composition is based on the screen ratio; Log materials can be directly entered into DaVinci, and editing and color grading are all familiar.

The radio is equipped with a movie-grade gun microphone, and a professional microphone that is tens of centimeters long is stuffed into the fuselage that is a few millimeters thick. A teleconverter and a rabbit cage can also be hung outside the fuselage; the three lenses illuminate the “three-lens turret” of the Alai camera, arranged in a triangle.

The standard version has a 6.37-inch small screen. The image is the same as that of Pro Max, and it is the same Alai double 200 million. This year, the mainstream of imaging flagships is large screens, but this is the only one with a full image quality over 6 inches.

Honor equips it with Android’s first square-format front camera, which supports 1:1 square-format shooting, and launches a new “vertical grip and horizontal shooting” function to provide more flexible composition space for single and multi-person selfies and post-production cropping.

At the same time, this small-screen flagship also debuted ARRI Movie Live, which adopts a 2.39:1 professional movie format, supports frame-by-frame high-definition, precise and controllable 3-second recording, and can be applied to 87 ARRI Looks; with new gameplay such as Sanpin Live, ordinary users can also get a cinematic feel with one click.

Let’s look at the price/performance ratio.With the Huawei Mate90 series scheduled for the National Day, the Magic9 series is the finale of the flagship release month. In addition to the starting price of 3,999 yuan after the national subsidy, the mainstream 16G+512G range of Android flagships:

vivo X500 Pro Max, 8,499 yuan;

OPPO Find X10 Pro Max, 7999 yuan;

Xiaomi 18 Pro Max, 8,999 yuan;

Honor Magic9 Pro Max, 7,499 yuan.

Obviously, Honor is sincere in sacrificing profits to increase sales, and the timing is good.Memory and chip costs have soared this year, and some leading mobile phone brands have copied Apple’s playbook: delaying the release of the standard version and raising the price of the Pro series flagship.

As a result, users are more willing to spend more money to buy the iPhone 18 Pro series directly, which has also frustrated the sales of OVmi.

A blogger revealed that the iPhone 18 Pro series sold nearly 1.3 million units in the first week, which was 115% of the same period last year. According to industry blogger “RD Observation”, the launch sales of the three new flagships of vivo, OPPO and Xiaomi are only equivalent to 25%-40% of the previous generation, with sales plummeting by 60% to 70%.

Comparing the two, this leading mobile phone brand seems to have been led into a ditch by Apple. If you don’t have the life of an apple, you must first get the apple’s disease.

In fact, Honor has never gotten rid of the “shadow of Huawei” and has always been regarded as a replacement. It has also been proving that it is different from Huawei.

Li Jian repeatedly said this year, “Dare to think and dare to be different.” As the first flagship after the refresh of the Honor brand, the positioning of the Honor Magic9 series has been further clarified as “born for creation.”

He called Magic9 a decade of ingenuity dedicated to the creators of this era. But I also saw his “sword skills”: only the Pro Max uses the sixth-generation Snapdragon 8 Super Extreme Edition, while the standard and super versions are still the fifth generation.

The chip performance has long been exceeded, which I can understand.

When Li Jian announced the price of the Magic9 series, he said the truth: the industry has reached its most difficult moment. But if it’s difficult for manufacturers, isn’t it difficult for users? The industry is under pressure, and it cannot simply become pressure on users. No matter how much the cost increases, it cannot all be passed on.

IDC data shows that the prices of storage and other components have increased since March, and Android manufacturers have collectively raised prices. As a result, mobile phone sales during the 618 promotion fell by nearly 15% year-on-year. In the second quarter, 66.01 million units were shipped in the Chinese market, a year-on-year decrease of 4.3%.

Honor has stumbled on price. The starting price of Magic8 Pro increased from 5,699 yuan to 6,299 yuan. According to the media at the time, the core configuration did not follow suit, and the price went up first; the sales volume of that series in a year was nearly 30% less than that of Magic7.

The starting price of 3,999 yuan after national subsidies is a make-up lesson for the previous one.

Then there’s AI.Honor has not had a good life in the past two years. For example, in the second quarter of this year, its domestic share was 11.3%, ranking sixth, and a year-on-year decline of 9.5%. It is even more uncomfortable to look at the high-end. In the market above US$600, Honor only has 1.58%, Apple 34%, and Huawei 16.4%.

The high-end product that really sells it is the foldable one. The straight-board Magic has always had that short leg. An independent analyst said that among the six major manufacturers, Honor’s brand awareness is the least clear. For everyone to know you, you must make a breakthrough.

Last year, Li Jian turned the company into an AI terminal ecosystem company, investing US$10 billion in five years; Robot Phone is the first new thing on this road, and it is also the most commonly mentioned variable when outsiders judge Honor’s valuation logic.

Key among them is AI storytelling.A typical example is MagicOS 11, which did one thing one step ahead of its peers, that is, it worked with Alibaba to create a large 397B intelligent model, realizing the commercial implementation of the Agent Harness framework on mobile phones for the first time.

To put it bluntly, AI is no longer a button that you click to activate. It can complete a task in the background. Several specific scenarios are similar:

The whole series is equipped with exclusive AI buttons. YOYO One-click Miaoji can remember audio and video clips, generate subtitle puzzles, convert videos to Live, and collect the fragments such as pickup codes and meal pickup codes by itself;

The industry’s first AI call assistant can help you bypass manual customer service – anyone who has called operators or banks knows how easy this is;

The cross-brand one-touch communication has even opened up the Apple ecosystem. iPhone calls can be synchronized, and photos in the iPhone can be viewed on Honor and modified using AI.

These all fall into daily scenarios and are more operational than the “forced entry” method of bean bag mobile phones. Official data shows that YOYO intelligent body can automatically execute in more than 3,000 scenarios.

There is another bright spot about AI. Honor also launched the Token package with China Mobile: MobileAI Master Plan, 169 yuan/month includes 50 million mobile tokens, and the phone bill can be paid.

It is the first time in the industry that Token has been put on the shelves of operators.

The outside world can also see a path for Honor AI: its model capabilities are not necessarily the strongest in the industry, but its system of integrating AI and agent capabilities into user experience is the fastest in the industry.

However, the difficulties encountered by the two generations of Beanbao mobile phones also serve as a reminder: the path to realizing AI mobile phones is still at the same starting line, and no brand can yet predict the outcome.

Today, Honor has several lines of focus: Robot Phone, AI terminal ecosystem, and humanoid robots. Honor’s R&D investment of tens of billions means higher revenue pressure, and it also needs to tell a perfect story to the capital market.

Look at it this way,The Magic9 series is a battle that Honor is proactively fighting, especially at the critical juncture of IPO. Sales volume is the most important proof right now.

But more importantly, Glory grows through hardship. This time, it did not rush to prove whether it was a stand-in, but calmly found its place in the industry at its own pace.

This may be a key enabler for it to win this battle.

I am Tang Chen, a student who focuses on Internet technology and AI new economy. Original content, no reproduction without permission.

“Classmate Tang Chen”

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