180 Billion Yuan, AI Smartphone Giant Plans IPO

The roller-coaster hard technology track is about to welcome a blockbuster IPO.

It is learned from Investor Network that the fourth-phase tutoring progress report submitted by CITIC Securities recently has sent shockwaves across the industry. The report shows that the A-share listing tutoring of Honor, a domestic mobile phone giant, is steadily advancing, dispelling the previously viral rumor of "IPO termination". According to an analyst, Honor's IPO is of extraordinary significance. "The A-share AI players are concentrated in the fields of algorithms, computing power and chips, and there is a lack of enterprises with massive C-end users and a full-category terminal ecosystem." If Honor successfully goes public, it is expected to become the "first stock of AI terminal ecosystem".

As one of the most high-profile star unicorns in the venture capital circle, Honor has had a glorious journey. In the early years, the outside world paid attention to Honor all because of Huawei. It used to be a cost-effective mobile phone brand that Huawei focused on, and competed head-to-head with Xiaomi for years. In 2017, Honor reached its peak, surpassing Xiaomi with shipments of 54.5 million units and revenue of 78.9 billion yuan, and took the top spot in domestic Internet mobile phone sales.

However, in 2020, Huawei sold Honor, and the latter has since broken away from the system and operated independently. After leaving Huawei, Honor was frantically sought after by VC/PEs, and was backed by dozens of top-tier capitals such as CICC Capital, China Telecom Investment, China Mobile, and BOE, enjoying unrivaled popularity. In terms of strategy, Honor has always wanted to get rid of the "involution" of traditional smartphones, launched the Alpha Strategy, and once announced that it would invest more than 10 billion US dollars to bet on chips, embodied intelligence and AI terminal ecosystem. At the 2026 Mobile World Congress, Honor exhibited its "Robot Phone" and humanoid robot. By doing all this, Honor seems to be more trying to prove that "I can make it".

I

After breaking away from Huawei and struggling in the "involution" of domestic mobile phones, Honor wants to carve out a new path through transformation and IPO.

The story of Honor can be divided into two phases, the first phase is the era of Huawei Honor.

In 2013, the domestic smartphone market was full of fierce competition. Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, took the lead in making moves. He came up with a new strategy to quickly capture young users relying on online traffic, e-commerce channels and cost-effective models. Lei Jun's strategy centered on young users soon attracted the attention of major mobile phone manufacturers. In December of that year, Huawei Honor officially debuted as an independent brand.

Externally, it focused on online marketing, thousand-yuan smartphones and young user groups. Internally, Huawei provided Honor with Kirin chips, self-developed imaging algorithms and communication patents. Honor started with a high profile, and quickly became a dark horse in domestic mobile phones with multiple products such as Honor 3C, Honor 6 and Honor V20. In 2017, Honor had already become a leading domestic mobile phone brand. With shipments of 54.5 million units and revenue of 78.9 billion yuan, it temporarily outperformed other mobile phone manufacturers and topped the domestic Internet mobile phone sales rankings. That year, the entire industry was inspired by Honor.

It was also the year that Xiaomi was overwhelmed by Honor. In the first quarter of 2017, Honor shipped 10.52 million units, outperforming Xiaomi's 9.54 million units. The Double 11 shopping festival was even more impressive: Honor's total sales on Tmall and JD platforms exceeded 4.02 billion yuan, and its single-day sales on JD even surpassed Apple. By the end of the year, Honor's domestic market share reached 14.5%, ranking first in Android phone sales.

It was in 2017 that the global mobile phone industry got to know Honor. Overseas markets were very optimistic that Honor would rewrite the second half of the global smartphone market. Domestically, Honor also became high-profile. What is most memorable to the media is the sentence from Zhao Ming, former CEO of Honor: "Honor is already the top brand of Internet mobile phones in China". At that time, Zhao Ming's strategy was extremely similar to Lei Jun's. He deeply integrated Huawei's technical advantages with Internet marketing, quickly found celebrity endorsements, fully seized the opportunities of e-commerce promotion activities, and continued to cultivate young fan communities.

Lei Jun never expected that Zhao Ming had mastered the tactics he was good at perfectly, which indirectly prompted Xiaomi to change its gameplay, increase investment in self-developed chips, and shift to high-end models. Overseas, Honor under the leadership of Zhao Ming also developed very rapidly. A convincing proof is that Honor once ranked first in the Russian mobile phone market, and entered the top five in markets such as France, Italy and Saudi Arabia. If this pace could be maintained, Honor's global competitors would only be Apple and Samsung, and the domestic smartphone landscape would also experience a major reshuffle.

"The world is unpredictable, and the situation is full of variables." In 2020, Huawei made a major decision, which slammed the brakes on Honor's rapid development. It sold Honor's assets, spun off this sub-brand from the Huawei system, and allowed it to grow independently. As soon as the news came out, the smartphone industry was worried about Honor, while the domestic venture capital circle was quite excited: they could not invest in Huawei, but they could invest in Honor.

However, this change also subverted Honor's underlying logic.

II

In 2020, Honor operated independently and started the second phase of its journey.

Although a large number of VCs/PEs entered the market, Honor fell into a dark moment at the beginning of its independence. The most intuitive manifestation was the decline in market reputation. Without Huawei's endorsement, Honor's market share plummeted to 3% from its peak, and the original supply of Kirin chips was cut off. This made Zhao Ming, who was good at marketing, have to rethink where the future path lies. And Xiaomi, which was already under great pressure, breathed a sigh of relief and rose rapidly.

At this stage, Honor impressed the outside world with steady development and transformation. Zhao Ming put aside the aura of marketing and led the team back to practical work. He did three things: first, restarted cooperation negotiations and visited core global upstream and downstream suppliers such as Qualcomm, Samsung and BOE. Second, opened up the supply channel for overseas components. Third, built a supply chain system of "overseas high-end components + domestic alternative components".

A year later, Honor seized the strategic model of the Honor 50 series and rebounded from the trough. It has to be said that the Honor 50 series received great responses after its launch, ending the embarrassing dilemma of "no products to sell" after leaving Huawei and the dark moment. According to IDC's data of the same year, Honor's shipments in the second quarter of 2021 reached 6.9 million units, and its market share rose back to 8.9% from 3%. According to Counterpoint's statistics, Honor's shipments continued to surge in the third quarter, with an overall share of 15%, catching up with Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi again.

In the year of rebound, Honor also made some adjustments, completing the simultaneous launch of consumer electronic products such as laptops, tablets, smart screens, watches and headphones. It used the traffic generated by smart products such as mobile phones to drive the IoT ecosystem. From 2022 to 2025, Zhao Ming had new ideas. He set his sights on the general trend of global technological development, and gradually built Honor into a non-traditional smartphone manufacturer.

What does that mean? In the past, when people mentioned Honor, the first reaction was Huawei, and the second reaction was a mobile phone seller. Starting from 2022, Honor devoted part of its main energy and funds to paving the way for technology. In terms of products, Honor stepped into the high-end foldable smartphone field. It released Magic V2 in 2023, which refreshed the record of the world's thinnest horizontal foldable screen at that time, and opened up the segmented track for fashion female users.

It is reported that this foldable screen technology was even featured on the CCTV program "Golden New Brand", and was selected as the "annual representative of domestic innovation" and the only awarded mobile phone brand. In addition to the Magic V2, many high-end products launched by Honor have strong technical innovation labels. For example, it independently developed the RF enhancement chip, Qinghai Lake battery, Eagle Eye capture system, and the industry-first Oasis eye-protective screen.

In order to strengthen its technological leadership, Honor has built joint laboratories with universities such as Fudan University to jointly tackle key problems in the fields of imaging, communication and materials. Since 2022, Honor has done a lot of things related to technological innovation, which is of course related to the capitalization and IPO process behind it. To go public, the story of simply selling mobile phones is obviously too thin. Moreover, the capital market is more in need of hard technology companies.

In 2024, Honor planned to go public. It completed the shareholding reform, expanded the number of capital shareholders to nearly 30, with a corresponding valuation of about 180 billion yuan. These shareholders also have distinctive features: most of them have layouts in the AI field, which makes Honor gradually shift its focus to AI, the world's largest trend. Its released Magic7 series focuses on on-device generative AI, and it has jointly built an AI-native terminal with Qualcomm.

Under the general trend of global development, being tied to AI makes it easier to get the admission ticket to the capital market.

III

In the capital market, the concept of AI mobile phone is far more popular than that of traditional smartphones.

From the second half of 2025 to the first half of 2026, the AI-related sectors in US stocks, A-shares and Hong Kong stocks, including storage, embodied intelligence, PCB and optical modules, have experienced a crazy surge, and investors have made a lot of money. 5-fold super gain stocks are "very common" in these markets, and investing in these sectors in the above cycle is "making money effortlessly". Honor is also very forward-looking, it seized the first opportunity of AI and achieved strategic leap in 2025.

In 2025, Zhao Ming, who was anxious and busy for the company's traffic, marketing and transformation, left Honor, and the new CEO Li Jian took office. Some people say that Li Jian is the key figure for Honor's rebound from the trough. He joined Huawei in the early years, is good at overseas business, and is the "benchmark for overseas operations" inside the company, with unique insights into the changes of the world's mainstream tracks and trends. The first thing Li Jian did after taking office was to release the Alpha Strategy, upgrading Honor from a smartphone manufacturer to a "world's leading AI terminal ecosystem company".

This is also the first time that Honor has officially repositioned itself. Li Jian put forward a series of AI plans. It will invest more than 10 billion US dollars in the next five years to build the AI ecosystem. To show its determination, Honor set up a new AI industry department, an embodied intelligence laboratory and a humanoid robot research team in its organizational structure. Honor has taken a big step: it is not only involved in AI, but also in embodied intelligent robots.

Entering the robot field means that it will compete with leading unicorns such as Unitree Robotics, Fourier Intelligence and Galbot. On the one hand, it is advancing into the humanoid robot track, on the other hand, Honor released the Magic8 series, the world's first self-evolving AI mobile phone, which can realize innovative functions such as automatic schedule planning, active scenario services and AI low-light telephoto shooting. In short, Honor no longer wants to compete in the involution of traditional smartphones.

It is going to compete in new industries and new tracks. It is not a smartphone giant, but an AI mobile phone giant. Entering 2026, Honor's AI story is getting bigger and bigger. It wants to become the first truly "AI terminal ecosystem" company in China, explore the collaborative mode of "mobile AI agent + robot terminal", and accelerate the pace of A-share IPO while the global AI sector is extremely hot in the capital market.

However, the false rumor in May really shocked the venture capital circle. If the "IPO is terminated", the industrial heat related to AI smartphones may decline, and the AI smartphone concept may become a bubble. According to the fourth-phase tutoring progress report submitted by CITIC Securities, Honor's A-share listing tutoring is steadily advancing, and it is on the way to sprint for IPO. In terms of finance, Honor has not reached the stage of full disclosure of data.

In terms of shipment statistics, the global mobile phone shipment volume in 2025 was 71 million units, a year-on-year increase of 9%. Overseas sales surged 47% year-on-year, and the proportion of overseas revenue exceeded 50% for the first time. According to estimates by third-party institutions, the company's revenue range in 2025 is about 124-128 billion yuan. Since Honor's IPO process is still in the tutoring stage and has not reached the stage of disclosing financial data, all data cannot be confirmed as true or false.

One thing is certain: Honor has completed its self-transformation, upgrading and technological iteration in five years of independence. Its sprint for IPO not only wants to prove that "I can make it", but also gives an account to the capitals that have invested in the company for a long time, and strives for a new development path and a new way of survival.

So, are you optimistic about Honor's A-share IPO journey?

This article is from the WeChat official account "Investor", author: Yun Fan, authorized by 36Kr for release.