Huawei Opens Flagship Store In Shenzhen

Huawei has opened its flagship store in Shenzhen where it sits in the Chinese city's MixC World shopping mall, touting the area as a place where "fashion, technology, and liberal art" meld. Spanning 1,300 square meters, the three-storey store has been in the works since 2017 and is manned by 120 consultants. 

These specialists hailed from various fields such as hotel, art, and aviation, and were able to tend to customers in multiple languages, Huawei said in a statement Monday. It added that store visitors would be able to access a range of services including device purchase, maintenance, and training. They also would be able to attend free courses covering topics such as photography, sports, and healthcare, while app developers could tap the expertise of Huawei's technical consultants.

The vendor's CEO of consumer business Richard Yu said: "MixC World is a gathering place where fashion, technology, and liberal art meet together and Huawei Global Flagship Store will become Huawei's city living room connecting the consumers." 

The Shenzhen store boasts full 5G coverage and is equipped with Huawei's Intelligent Environmental Control System, which runs on the vendor's HiLink technology to automatically adjust the brightness, temperature, and humidity within the retail site. 

Huawei added that the store was built on environmentally friendly and recyclable materials. For example, its ceilings and walls used felt made of recyclable plastic parts, while tables used nanoboard that were touted to last more than 10 years. 

The Chinese smartphone maker described the store as its first "direct-sale store in the world", but it currently operates 11 "concept stores" in Singapore, from which customers can purchase its products including the Huawei Mate 30 Pro and and P30 Pro.

According to the company, its products and services are available in more than 170 countries and it has 16 research and development facilities worldwide, including in India, Germany, Sweden, and the US. 

Huawei early this month unveiled a new P30 Pro that shipped with Google's Android 10 mobile OS, despite a US trade ban that barred US companies such as Google and Microsoft from supplying technology to Huawei. Google last month said its license exempting it from the export restrictions still prevented it from supplying software for new products. 

Huawei, meanwhile, has been developing its alternative Harmony OS, which recently was described as "completely different" from Android and Apple iOS. Yu said at the company's developer conference in Dongguan: "It is a microkernel-based, distributed OS that delivers a smooth experience across all scenarios. It has trustworthy and secure architecture, and it supports seamless collaboration across devices. You can develop your apps once, then flexibly deploy them across a range of different devices."

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