(Yicai) May 20 -- Huawei Technologies has unveiled the Nova 14, the latest version of the Chinese tech giant’s mid-range mobile phone series, with prices starting at CNY2,699 (USD375) for the standard version.

The Pro and Ultra versions, launched yesterday, will go on sale on May 23, priced at CNY3,499 and CNY4,199, respectively.

The Nova series has long been an important pillar of Huawei's mobile phone sales, said Ivan Lam, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research. The Nova 14 is expected to continue to target the mid-to-high-end market, but its sales potential will depend on the pricing strategy and the speed of upgrades, Lam noted.

The Nova 14 feature’s Huawei’s latest HarmonyOS 5 operating system, along with artificial intelligence features such as AI portrait retouch that are expected to improve its photo capabilities.

Richard Yu, executive director of Huawei and chairman of its consumer business group, said last year that Huawei’s new mobile phones and tablets will all be equipped with HarmonyOS 5 this year. According to company data, over 800 million Huawei devices with HarmonyOS have already been sold, and the release of the Nova 14 series is expected to push this to over 1 billion by the end of 2025.

Sales should be strong thanks to the domestic user base, and the current focus is still the domestic market, Lam said, but more work needs to be done to boost sales of HarmonyOS devices in overseas markets.

“From the perspective of long-term challenges, it is necessary to attract more third-party developers to join the HarmonyOS ecosystem, especially overseas application vendors, to improve global service capabilities,” Lam said. 

“In the short term, compared with Apple, Huawei also needs to solve the long-term benefits of the supply chain, such as ensuring the profits of parts suppliers and establishing a sustainable ecosystem partner benefit mechanism,” he added.

The Nova series was released in 2016, with sales peaking in 2023. Huawei sold more than 100,000 Nova 13 handsets in the first quarter of this year, partly thanks to a national consumer subsidy program. The program aims to encourage consumption through product trade-ins and upgrades and was expanded to include personal devices such as smartphones on Jan. 23.

Huawei revealed last month that net profit dropped 28 percent last year to CNY62.6 billion (USD8.6 billion), in line with the Shenzhen-based firm’s expectations.

Editor: Tom Litting