Huawei is expected to make its new Mate 90 series known to the world a little later this month. The launch is only rumoured out of China, but there’s another one to follow. If you were hoping for the company to keep its pricing stable, you’ll have to think again.
A leak via Chinese social media platform Weibo reckons Huawei has at least five different versions of the Mate 90 coming. These are the basic 90, the 90 Pro, a Pro Max edition, and a Collector’s Edition. There’s also an RS Design version of the phone inbound. The pricier of these is expected to cost more than last year, to boot.
Bit expensive, Mate 90
There’s even a value given — ¥1,000, or about R2,400 added to the price of the Huawei Mate 90’s more expensive variants. What we don’t know is where in the hierarchy Huawei’s devices will start going up. If the 90 and 90 Pro skip the price increase, South Africans probably won’t have such a bad time of it (through official channels, anyway). The Chinese brand has launched the Pro version of its Mate series in SA, but tends to skip the others.
If the Mate 90 Pro does suffer from the price increase, locally it could cost R24,500 at launch. That’s a direct upscale of the Mate 80 Pro‘s launch price. Speaking of which, the Mate 80 Pro’s current local discount suggests Huawei is shifting stock to make room for the shiny new thing. A new version of the Mate 80 Pro will set buyers back R13,000 right now.
Apple’s done something similar with its new device pricing tiers, at least here in South Africa. The standard versions of Apple’s latest iPhones cost about the same as last year. Go for expanded storage, and you’ll encounter a major price increase over last year’s models. It makes a kind of sense — folks already paying for the premium version are a) more able and b) more likely to eat an increased cost.
