Author | Wen Yehao

Editor | Wu Xianzhi

"A decade of glory, it's time to tie a knot. Iconic Ming brother press conferences will no longer be a part of our future. Each generation has its own journey, and it's a great pity I won't accompany Honor into its next decade."

Recently, Zhao Ming, amidst a media frenzy, penned these heartfelt words in an open letter on his personal Weibo account, bidding farewell to his illustrious career at Honor.

Just days prior, news of Zhao Ming's resignation spread like wildfire. Despite Honor's swift attempts to quell rumors through multiple channels, none of these efforts were formal or reassuring. Meanwhile, Zhao Ming's usually active Weibo account remained silent, fueling speculation and confusion.

However, this Rashomon effect was short-lived. On January 17, Honor issued an internal announcement stating: "Due to health reasons, Zhao Ming has submitted his resignation from his position as CEO and other related roles. After careful consideration, the board of directors has decided to respect Zhao Ming's wishes and accept his resignation. Concurrently, it has been decided that Li Jian will take over as CEO."

Since Honor's independence, Zhao Ming has left an indelible mark on almost every pivotal moment, from its dormant days to bearing pressure, to gradual maturity. Though he was a professional manager, his decade-long tenure as Honor's head made his name synonymous with the brand itself in the eyes of the outside world.

Now, everything has come to an abrupt halt. Honor has lost its "leader," and the outside world has bid farewell to the "Ming brother" who once graced the stage, interacted with the audience, and faced the media, inevitably evoking sighs of "the end of an era."

It is worth noting that this development comes at a time when Honor has just completed its shareholding reform and is intensively preparing for its IPO. This sudden change in senior management undoubtedly adds more uncertainty to Honor's already unpredictable future.

The Key Figure in Honor's "Resurrection"

When one thinks of Huawei, Yu Chengdong comes to mind; for Xiaomi, it's Lei Jun; and for Honor, it's virtually impossible not to think of Zhao Ming.

Over the past decade, Zhao Ming has become synonymous with Honor. The saying "Honor = Zhao Ming, Zhao Ming = Honor" is widely accepted among most Honor fans and those who follow the smartphone industry closely.

Thus, when Zhao Ming posted a farewell article on the internal network after stepping down, stating that "choosing to let go and leave Honor is the most difficult decision I have ever made in my life," no one doubted the sincerity of his thoughts.

Little did people know that before joining Honor, Zhao Ming was not strictly a "mobile phone person."

In 1998, after graduating from Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a master's degree, Zhao Ming joined Huawei. At that time, he did not directly engage in the smartphone business but worked in roles such as staff in the Wireless Product Management Department and representative of the Italian representative office. Before becoming president of Honor in 2015, Zhao Ming was still responsible for the To B field as vice president of Huawei's Western Europe region.

The mutual transformation and integration of the two began at this moment.

The birth of Honor was initially intended to address the challenge posed by internet brands like Xiaomi. It was the golden age of the domestic internet, and corporate executives' statements were far less promotional than they are today. After the departure of the second president, Liu Jiangfeng, Honor needed a senior executive who possessed both the spirit of the internet and the courage to confront competitors publicly. Zhao Ming's arrival filled this void.

Before this, as a business elite and vice president of Huawei's Western Europe region, Zhao Ming often wore high-end business suits. However, in his first public appearance after joining Honor, Zhao Ming shed his suit and tie, wearing only a shirt and deliberately unbuttoning the second button, a symbol of the internet spirit.

This attire was worn for five years. During this period, he donned T-shirts, sweaters, and hoodies, and the media and fans' appellations for him changed from the slightly aloof "trendy man" to the more intimate "Ming brother."

However, this suit, which he voluntarily took off, was forced back on during his fifth year as the head of Honor, on November 17, 2020 – the day when Huawei's sale of Honor was finalized. Zhao Ming bid farewell to Huawei along with Honor, taking up the position of CEO of the new Honor. As the leader, Zhao Ming had to guide Honor to survive and make a significant impact on the high-end smartphone market.

Facing the high-end market, although Zhao Ming resumed a more business-like tone in his attire, his internet-savvy humor remained, contributing to many iconic moments at press conferences. The phrase "There will be no more iconic Ming brother press conferences in the future" was written by Zhao Ming in his farewell letters on both the internal network and Weibo after his departure, showing his attachment and concern for his past "highlight moments."

From an internet brand to sprinting towards the high end, Zhao Ming fully integrated into Honor, constantly conveying these two distinctly different brand positions through his individuality.

While Honor was influencing Zhao Ming, Zhao Ming was also transforming Honor.

For example, he freed Honor from the "cage" of being an internet brand. In 2016, Honor and Xiaomi's internet model faced unprecedented scrutiny. In response, Honor ventured out of its established orbit and focused on offline efforts through asset-light models and PartnerHub. This move also made Honor controversial within Huawei.

The offline retail and dealer networks established by Zhao Ming against the odds not only saved Honor during its early days of independence but also played a crucial role in its quest to reach higher grounds.

Especially during the early days of Honor's independence, many doubted the story of "phoenix rising from the ashes." Discussions often ended with sentiments like "Honor won't make it" and "It's always losing money, it can't hold on much longer." After all, domestic supply had not yet recovered, and Honor faced many constraints in both domestic and global markets.

Due to the unavailability of chips, Honor was unable to ship products to overseas markets for over a year; the domestic market could only ensure the survival of offline retailers through "drip irrigation"-like methods. However, even during the darkest moments, there was still a group of Honor dealers who persevered despite shortages and losses.

At that time, Honor had two paths: either to fall as other brands hoped, or to rise from the ashes. Under Zhao Ming's leadership, Honor quickly resumed supply agreements with suppliers such as AMD, Qualcomm, Intel, and MediaTek, ensuring its survival.

It can be said that without Zhao Ming and the many dealers, Honor's "resurrection from the dead" would have been almost impossible.

It was precisely due to the persistence of the core team and these dealers that Honor was able to maintain a "presence" in the market. Even with chip shortages and severe shortages, Honor maintained a bond with its users, winning the most valuable time for the brand's recovery. Without an offline presence and relying solely on online sales, Honor would likely have already fallen into an embarrassing situation of being forgotten due to inventory disruptions and waning brand appeal, becoming one of the hundreds of mobile phone brands that struggled to survive but ultimately failed.

Another mark Zhao Ming left on Honor was the high-end market.

If surviving was once Honor's "top priority," then going high-end and going overseas are Honor's two ultimate challenges, in addition to going public.

After achieving the goal of "surviving," Honor began its true ascent from the line of life and death. Judging from the actual situation, Zhao Ming has both achievements worth acknowledging and some regrets and unfinished business on this path.

Four Years of Independence, Tearing Off the Old Labels of Honor

Zhao Ming took on the important responsibility of New Honor from the very beginning.

In the early days of Honor's independence, some media outlets asked Zhao Ming whether the high-end market would be the responsibility of the marketing department or whether there would be a team in the product department responsible for it. Zhao Ming's response was: "I am fully responsible for this. This matter is definitely a CEO's project."

However, achieving this goal was fraught with difficulties. Honor's past positioning as a Huawei sub-brand and an internet brand was deeply etched onto the brand.

On the one hand, as an internet brand, Honor inherited too much of the low-to-mid-end market, with a brand tone not much better than that of Xiaomi at the time; on the other hand, the perception of Honor belonging to Huawei was deeply ingrained in users' minds. Although this was beneficial to some extent for selling products, in the long run, living in Huawei's shadow prevented Honor from becoming its own entity.

To become its own entity, Honor had to tear off the labels adhered to its brand bones, along with its previous "flesh and blood."

However, from an internal structural perspective, almost all of the thousands of employees in the early days of Honor's independence were the "original team" from Huawei. Therefore, for a considerable period of time, whether it was in terms of design or software systems, Honor's high-end products could not conceal the shadow of Huawei's Mate and P series, appearing both familiar and with traces of "inheritance."

In this regard, Zhao Ming, as a science and engineering man, seems to believe that "technology changes the world." He once revealed that when Honor first became independent, the company had a total of nearly 8,000 employees, and later, the number of R&D personnel alone exceeded this figure. This allowed Honor to continuously make eye care, batteries, foldable screens, AI, and other fields its own labels thereafter.

The most eye-catching is Honor's aggressive push in the foldable screen arena. In recent years, Honor has invested heavily in the foldable screen sector, especially in the characteristic of "thinness and lightness," where Honor has almost redefined the standards of the sector and once captured a significant share of the foldable screen market.

However, in the foldable screen battle, although Zhao Ming and Honor won, their victory was not complete.

When Honor bet on foldable screens, the exponentially growing shipments of foldable screens were still the common hope of the smartphone market. However, the competition within the sector was extremely fierce – brands have engaged in multiple collisions around the hinge, a core patent for foldable screens.

In the short term, Honor won this battle.

According to the recollections of several Honor channel partners, when the Honor Magic V2 was released, users lined up and were willing to pay a premium for it – that quarter, the sales of the Honor Magic V2 ranked first in China's horizontal foldable screen market. And the latest data from IDC shows that in the third quarter of 2024, Honor still ranked second in the domestic foldable screen market with a 21.9% share, second only to Huawei after its return.

However, in the long run, the bet on foldable screens did not seem to yield the expected chips from the table.

In July 2024, when Zhao Ming launched the Honor Magic V3 and Magic Vs3, he admitted that Honor's cumulative losses in the foldable screen sector had reached 2 to 3 billion yuan.

This figure is heavy enough for any company. The fundamental logic behind Honor's willingness to place a heavy bet is that as market share expands, the increase in scale effects will promote production efficiency, thereby reducing production costs and ultimately cutting into a broader mainstream market through price advantages. Based on this assumption, Honor once regarded straight-screen phones as its main competitors, expecting to break out of the "niche" circle of foldable screens and move towards a larger market.

However, as time passed, the mobile phone industry gradually realized that foldable screens are still only a vertical and niche market. The market capacity is far from as large as initially expected and cannot replace traditional straight-screen phones on a large scale.

Counterpoint data shows that in the third quarter of 2024, foldable phone shipments have declined year-on-year, and are expected to continue to decline in 2025 – Honor, which bet on foldable screens, did not wait for an explosion in the market.

AI is another technology front where Honor has invested heavily under Zhao Ming's leadership. Today, Honor, which boasts about "mobile phone autonomous driving," is at the forefront of AI mobile phones. At the new product launch event last October, Zhao Ming contributed the last "Ming brother iconic moment" of his career at Honor – with just one sentence, he made AI order 2,000 cups of Luckin Coffee, which went viral on the internet.

However, from a technological perspective, AI mobile phones still appear to be more of an incremental improvement rather than a revolutionary breakthrough, and they are not enough to trigger the next wave of phone replacements. Despite Honor's huge investment in AI, the market's response to AI mobile phones is still lukewarm, and it will take time for it to bring about substantial sales growth.

Canalys data indicates that from the first to the third quarter of 2024, Honor ranked third, fourth, and third respectively in terms of domestic market share. However, in the fourth quarter, it was relegated to the "other" category, failing to make the top five.

This decline can largely be attributed to Honor's focus on high-end products and overseas expansion, while neglecting the critical competitiveness derived from a multi-brand strategy and internet appeal. Perhaps recognizing this, Zhao Ming launched the Honor GT brand at the end of 2024, aiming to reclaim its position in the internet sector. Yet, subsequent developments have veered away from his original vision.

Ultimately, after Honor's independence, Zhao Ming worked tirelessly to shed its former labels, gradually transforming it into a new entity. It moved from being overshadowed by Huawei to being a so-called "leader with glory" last year.

After stepping down, Zhao Ming acknowledged Honor's achievements on Weibo: ranking among the top five in the global high-end market and achieving over 50% overseas sales in December 2024. Although slightly delayed, he fulfilled his decade-old promise at Honor's inception to pragmatically and focusedly fly towards the global market as a "slow bird".

During this journey, while Honor under Zhao Ming's leadership did not always tread steadily and failed to regain its former internet prominence, falling short of market leaders last year, his efforts in guiding Honor through survival and towards high-end and overseas expansion were significant. It's plausible that had anyone else taken his place, they might not have fared better.

With Honor's IPO in limbo and Zhao Ming's departure, it undoubtedly marks a significant loss for the company.

Glory's Unfinished Business as Zhao Ming Steps Down

Rumors of Honor's IPO have lingered in the industry for years. Since its independence, there have been reports of an intended public listing within three years, with annual speculation persisting ever since.

Initially, there was speculation about a backdoor listing, causing fluctuations in the share prices of potential shell companies like Bird Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Urban Transport Planning & Design Institute Co., Ltd., and Tianyin Holding Co., Ltd. This speculation persisted until Honor officially announced its IPO plans.

Since the second half of last year, Honor, which has been frequently mentioned in IPO rumors, seems to have gained more certainty in its path.

After initiating shareholding reform in the fourth quarter of 2024, Honor appears to have embarked on a rapid trajectory – from securing investment from China Mobile, to receiving funds from China Telecom and CICC Capital. Shortly after announcing the reform, Wan Biao, Honor's former chairman, also resigned as vice chairman due to personal reasons, signaling a complete departure from the company's senior management.

Photon Planet once mentioned in "Honor Being Pushed to Go Public" that the urgency to go public might stem from shareholders, dealers, and employees eager to cash in on their investments, making it a necessity given the momentum already built.

At the time, Wan Biao's departure seemed to free up Zhao Ming to some extent, giving him more maneuvering space. However, the current chairman, Wu Hui, has the primary task of driving the IPO process. What no one anticipated was that even Zhao Ming, who had led Honor for a decade, would ultimately have to make potential sacrifices for the IPO, alongside Wan Biao, another former Huawei employee.

Regarding Zhao Ming's departure, there has been much speculation, including the slow IPO process or Honor's rapid market share decline last year. While investors appreciate stories with potential, tangible performance and growth ultimately convince them.

Under Zhao Ming's leadership, despite significant investment in brand repositioning and premiumization, Honor's valuation did not rise as expected. For shareholders eager to recoup their investments, years of waiting without financial returns from Honor might lead to disappointment.

Moreover, as a key figure managing both the new Honor and the premium products of the old Honor, strategic differences or disagreements between Zhao Ming and the board of directors have fueled outside speculation.

However, the specific reasons remain unclear to outsiders. Nevertheless, Zhao Ming mentioned in an internal open letter, "My shares are still in the company, and I look forward to Honor reaching new heights in 2025." This suggests that despite possible differences and conflicts, the farewell was dignified and amicable.

Zhao Ming, who has always been passionate about running, ultimately stepped down due to health reasons, potentially hinting at underlying implications difficult to express.

Regardless, Honor has now bid farewell to the era of Zhao Ming. How it will progress in the "post-Zhao Ming era" and whether it can successfully complete its IPO remains to be seen by Li Jian, the successor.