Chinese telecom equipment and consumer electronics giant Huawei Technologies has been having a great time of late in the smartphone business. The company has been selling mobile phones by the boatload, thanks in no small measure to its Honor sub-brand, which has reportedly accounted for as many as 20 million units sold during the first half of the current calendar year. This remarkable achievement has helped the company become the largest smartphone vendor in a mission-critical market like China, staving off intense competition from home-grown upstarts such as Xiaomi and Miezu, along with global giants such as Samsung, Apple, Sony and LG, all of whom trail way behind the company that's steadily climbing the popularity charts worldwide, thanks to the company's critically acclaimed and commercially successful Nexus 6P smartphone, which happens to be Google's flagship handset for this year.

While Huawei's best-known smartphone internationally remains the aforementioned Nexus 6P, the company's Ascend range of handsets continues to be a major revenue source for the Shenzhen, Guangdong-based firm. While Huawei ditched the 'Ascend' moniker for the latest device in the series (which is simply called the Huawei P8), the range remains as popular as ever. The company has reportedly been hard at work on the next-generation device in the lineup, and now, the latest rumor regarding the handset seems to indicate that the company will actually launch the device in March next year. If the current report is anything to go by, seems as though earlier rumors that suggested an end-2015 launch date for the P9 may have been just that – unsubstantiated rumors.


What we have read about the upcoming Huawei P9 meanwhile, seems to suggest a fairly well-spec'd smartphone that will be powered by Huawei's top-shelf HiSilicon Kirin 950 SoC, which will come with an integrated 64-bit, octa-core CPU. The P9 will reportedly be shipped with a curved design, featuring a 5.2-inch display, 4 GB of RAM and dual rear camera set-up that comes with laser auto-focus. Some rumors have also suggested that a phablet version of the smartphone, called the Huawei P9 Max, could also very well be in the pipeline. The device is believed to come with a large 6.2-inch display, but there's no word on whether it will be launched at the same time as the standard P9.