Honor’s RMB 9,999 Robot Phone Sells Out in 1 Minute as Preorders Top 400,000
Updated
Updated · KrASIA · Aug 20
Honor’s RMB 9,999 Robot Phone Sells Out in 1 Minute as Preorders Top 400,000
3 articles · Updated · KrASIA · Aug 20
Summary
Honor said its new Robot Phone sold out across its e-commerce channels within one minute of going on sale, after preorders exceeded 400,000 units for the RMB 9,999 device.
The launch is a high-stakes bet on a new growth engine as rising memory costs and a global smartphone market contraction of more than 10% pressure the company.
More than 100 precision components had to fit into a 9-millimeter, 248-gram body, and engineers lifted the flip mechanism’s designed service life from about one year to five years after testing 18 material solutions in a week.
Honor is positioning the device between a smartphone and a gimbal camera, pairing ARRI imaging tools with Alibaba’s Qwen model to push its vision of AI phones as agent-driven devices.
The Robot Phone also serves as a technology test bed for Honor’s Sept. 28 Magic 9 launch, while the company says first-half global unit sales rose 9% and overseas sales grew 20%.