Multinational ICT services and solutions firm Huawei has confirmed that the release of the latest devices within its Mate 10 Series, including Huawei Mate 10 Pro and Porsche Design Huawei Mate 10 models, will be focused on the South African market for now.

In a preview of the phones ahead of their official launch in November, Huawei's Product Marketing Director Akhram Mohamed explained that at this time, the company wanted to concentrate its go-to-market strategy within South Africa and not in the rest of Africa.

"Not at the moment for this product specifically and purely because, even historically in South Africa, we have quite a bit of equity in the P Series and the Mate Series didn't quite fit in, because of, I think, a lack of understanding of where it fitted into the portfolio. This time we are doing it completely differently and coming in with a higher spec device," said Mohamed.

Huawei is banking on improved user experience offered through the EMUI interface, integration of the Kirin AI processor and AI architecture to enhance the smartphone's photographic capability and bolster user interest.

The value proposition of these devices, specifically Porsche Design model, is based on lifestyle and primarily targeted at the high end market. The Porsche Design is a limited edition and constructed with direct contribution by Porsche via its partnership with Huawei.

"Since the Blackberry partnership fell away and our negotiations with Porsche, we've moved from strength to strength. Yes you do have spec difference and a slight difference in terms of materials used, but we've looked at the phone being performance driven and the entire design language has been created by Porsche, it's not just a name stamped on. They created the entire look and feel," said Mohamed.

AI is one of the main features and in terms of architecture, the hardware is designed to work off the TensorFlow and Caffe platforms.

Mohamed said the company's approach to solution development and AI is to encourage innovation from all stakeholders within the broader AI ecosystem.

"So what we are saying is if we were going and developing certain applications and putting more functionality, it is restricted very much to the Huawei ecosystem. We want to encourage the innovation across the Android platform and make it available," he added.

The company says the game-plan main objective is to get more Kirin AI chips in other devices.

Huawei is looking to push its presence locally and claims that based on year-to-date statistics, in terms of volume, it has secured between 8% and 9% of the South African smartphone market and between 9% and 14% in terms of value.