Sources: Huawei Ascend D quad will be priced at 2,999 yuan ($472, €380)
By Vlad Bobleanta on 05 Jul 12Ever since Huawei unveiled its flagship smartphone for this year, the Ascend D quad, in February at MWC, there’s been one question on our minds: how much is it going to cost?
See, during that announcement, the Chinese company seemed really intent on ‘conquering’ the world with its smartphones for the first time. But because its brand isn’t really that well known in ‘developed’ markets, the main thing it could do this year to start moving some high-end units fast would be to price them below the competition. In Barcelona, one Huawei official did say he expects his company’s new smartphones to be about 20% cheaper than similarly-specced competitors.
And that may not have been an exaggeration. Unnamed sources have told the folks at MyDrivers that the upcoming Ascend D quad will be priced in China at 2,999 yuan when it finally gets released over there next month. That amounts to approximately $472, or €380, at the current exchange rates.
If this is true, and if the same pricing (or similar) will be applied in Europe… consider this. You’ll pay less than €400 for a smartphone that has an HD touchscreen, a quad-core processor, and 8 MP camera. That would be quite the achievement on Huawei’s part.
We’re still a bit skeptical though. Better that than being overly enthusiastic and then disappointed if things don’t turn out to be like this. Still, if this happens, Huawei may just have nailed the ‘best features for the price’ category in the high-end of the smartphone space. By far, even.
The Ascend D quad will almost certainly launch with the company’s Emotion UI on board, yet probably still with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. That’s a shame – Huawei could really surprise everyone by being among the first manufacturers to release a device running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Yet if the launch happens in August, that’s really unlikely to happen, since Google hasn’t released the JB source yet.
If you liked the post, you might find these interesting too:
- Quad-core Huawei Ascend D1 Q Android phone and new MediaPad 10 tablet to be announced at MWC 2012
- Huawei Ascend D Quad mass production to start only in June. Shipping scheduled for July
- Huawei delays Ascend D Quad flagship again, at least until August this time. Blames its own quad core CPU
- Dual-core Huawei Ascend D1 launching tomorrow in China
- Huawei Ascend W1 with Windows Phone 8 to be announced on September 25?
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