This year's Huawei flagship announcement at Mobile World Congress in February came a couple months ahead of the usual launch window. The Huawei P10, which broke cover in Barcelona a week ago, landed well in advance of the April announcement events Huawei has hosted for the P9, P8, and previous models.
Bruce Lee, Huawei's Vice President of Handsets Product Line, told us to expect future flagship launches in a similar cadence. Speaking exclusively to Android Central ahead of the P10 announcement in Barcelona, Lee said that the company had always tried to launch devices by March or April in order to kick off sales around the Easter period in Western Europe. Huawei wasn't able to hit that mark with the P8 or P9 but did for the first time with this year's P10.
"In the future, we will probably launch the devices at Mobile World Congress," Lee told us through an interpreter.
Although Huawei's standalone launch events — usually in London — have been well-attended in previous years, MWC allows the company to ride an even bigger wave of publicity, exposing its new products to journalists and others who may not have attended a separate press conference in another part of the world.
An earlier announcement, if it's followed up by an earlier retail launch, would allow Huawei to get future flagships on store shelves around the same time — or perhaps even earlier — than its major Android rival in Europe, Samsung. And while there's no guarantee that Huawei will hit this February target with future launches such as a P11 or P12, the timely arrival of the P10 is a good sign.
