Honor announces plans for IPO, surpasses market shares of Xiaomi, Apple and Huawei in China

Honor sold more smartphones in China in the third quarter of 2023 than any other manufacturer, according to an analysis by Canalys. Honor only just outperformed Oppo, Apple and Vivo with 11.8 million smartphones sold and a market share of 18%, and sold an impressive 2.7 million more smartphones than Xiaomi.

Honor is also celebrating successes in Europe: in the third quarter of 2023, Honor was the only one of the five largest smartphone manufacturers to record growth, while Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi shipped fewer units than in the same quarter of the previous year. Three years after spinning off from Huawei, Honor is now planning the next big step: an initial public offering (IPO), having officially confirmed this on Wednesday. So far, however, the company has not provided any information about when it will go public or on which stock exchange the company's shares will be listed.

Honor was sold to a consortium of 30 companies in November 2020 after Huawei wanted to prevent its own subsidiary from falling victim to the strict US sanctions that have decimated Huawei's market share within a few years, as the group can no longer offer smartphones with the latest Qualcomm processors, 5G modems or Google services. An IPO would possibly allow Huawei to buy back at least part of Honor.