Huawei P40 Series, launched this month in Johannesburg South Africa.

Last week Friday Huawei launched its Huawei P40 Series in Johannesburg South Africa, via a live streaming event hosted by local celebrity and actress Minnie Dlamini.

According to a statement released by the Chinese multinational company, the latest series represents its vision of the future of mobile imaging technology.

“It is a comprehensive upgrade from the previous generation, embodying all conceptual innovations realised by Huawei. The HUAWEI P40 Series is equipped with Huawei’s most sophisticated camera system to date, capable of producing breath-taking imagery with a lightweight chassis. These devices are testament to the fact that Huawei is unafraid to break the rules and to exceed expectations, and it does all of that in style,” the company added.

The Huawei P40 Pro and the Huawei P40 are available as of 1 June 2020, retailing at R20,999 and R16,999 respectively.

Huawei however did not confirm details pertaining to the release of the latest device to the rest of Africa.

Having participated at the Huawei Analyst Summit 2020 recently, Philip Kendall, Executive Director of global, independent research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics, penned a thought leadership article outlining the findings of a report Low Cost 4G Handsets: Market Dynamics and Opportunities.

Kendall said according to its new wireless market forecasts, at the start of this year 2G and 3G networks accounted for 46% of subscribers but just 27% of revenue globally.

By 2023 that revenue share will have fallen to just 10%, with Africa arguably the only significant outlier here, a region where countries can have ARPUs below $2 and so limited room to subsidize user behaviour change.

He added that there are significant developments happening in Africa and other developing regions to accelerate the adoption of 4G services, and some encouraging results from those efforts.

“For example, Airtel Africa’s 4G network expansion and “more for more” data offers have helped with migration to 4G, increasing average data use and data ARPUs significantly, with ¾ of its revenue growth coming from data over the last year: in March 2020, 4G accounted for 29% of its data subscribers (up from 18% a year earlier) and for over 60% of its data revenue,” Kendall added.

He said there are also good examples of operators actively engaging with players in the handset value chain to launch low-cost smartphones and smart feature phones.

“True Move in Thailand has made significant market share gains in recent years in part built on success with its affordable True Smart Series smartphone range, while in Indonesia, XL Axiata has brought in local electronics assemblers to produce smartphones such as the Evercoss Xtream range.”

“4G dominates XL’s data traffic profiles now and it has aggressive plans in 2020 to optimise its spectrum portfolio, ‘reducing the capacity and shutting down 2G and 3G sites in line with the reduction in traffic and free up the relevant spectrum for 4G to cater for the ever increasing 4G traffic’”.