Huawei to Launch New Osta Phone Brand on Nov. 20, Six Years After Honor Sale

By Sophie Lindqvist

Huawei will launch a new smartphone brand, Osta, on Nov. 20 at 2:30 p.m. Beijing time, consumer business chairman Richard Yu announced Wednesday. The date is firm. Almost nothing else about the brand is.

Yu's social media posts showed a device label reading "OSTA O1 Pro," matching the model name earlier reports attached to the brand's first phone. That label is the only primary evidence. Huawei has published no specifications, no prices and no product strategy.

Why the brand exists

The announcement comes six years after Huawei sold its budget brand Honor. That sale, in November 2020, transferred Honor to a consortium of more than 30 companies that supplied and distributed Honor phones. The purpose was defensive: U.S. sanctions had starved Huawei of chips, and separation was meant to shield Honor. Huawei kept no shares.

Osta reverses that logic. Huawei is adding a second brand from a position of domestic strength, not distress. The timing matters commercially, because it signals confidence that Huawei's chip supply, the original constraint, can now support two phone lines.

What do we actually know about the O1?

Very little, and the record should state that plainly. Reports point to a first lineup of two phones: the O1, a conventional bar phone, and the O1 Pro, a wider bar phone.

Huawei Central reported that both target the mid-to-high-end market. The same outlet cited leaked renders and a retail box pointing to flagship-level specs: a 50-megapixel main camera, up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. Those figures come from leaks. Huawei has confirmed none of them.

Early reports also suggest the brand could extend to tablets, watches and earbuds. Again, this is unconfirmed. A roadmap attributed to no named executive is a wish list, not a plan.

Is the market position strong enough?

The numbers say yes, with one caveat. Huawei led China's third-quarter smartphone market with a 21.1% share, up from 15.2% a year earlier, according to IDC. It shipped 17.3% more phones in China while the total market fell 15.4%, to roughly 57.9 million units. IDC data shows Huawei was the only top-six vendor to grow by double digits.

Counterpoint tells a slightly different story. It put the market decline at 10%, not 15.4%, and noted that Huawei raised prices on Sept. 1 — a move that could pressure its own sales in a shrinking market. Two analysts, two decline figures. Readers should treat the exact magnitude of the contraction as contested.

The company's car business offers a warning. October deliveries for HIMA, Huawei's alliance with Chinese automakers, halved, per MLQ.ai coverage. The same Nov. 20 event will launch the Stelato V8 sedan and show the Shangjie Z7T, two HIMA vehicles. Huawei's momentum in phones has not carried over to its automotive partners.

What the Nov. 20 event must answer

The launch carries three open questions. First, pricing: mid-to-high-end positioning means nothing until Huawei names numbers. Second, silicon: leaks mention RAM and storage, but not which chipset powers the phones — the question that defined Huawei's last five years goes unaddressed. Third, cannibalization: Osta will sit against Huawei's own Mate and Nova lines as well as Honor, the brand Huawei created and sold.

The confirmed facts are a date, a chairman's statement and a leaked model name. Everything else — camera sensors, memory tiers, device categories — rests on renders and retail boxes. Nov. 20 will show whether Osta is a serious second brand or a single phone wearing a new logo.