If you’ve been wanting to get the Huawei Mate 30 unable to because you’re not an existing Mate series user, you’re in luck. Huawei Malaysia is opening up a referral programme for new customers to pre-order the Huawei Mate 30 series. You need to hurry though, because it’s only available from 26-27 October; a special invitation from Huawei’s country director, Bill Liu himself.
I know what you’re thinking. What’s this convoluted way of pre-ordering a smartphone?
So, here’s what’s transpired. On 3 October, Huawei Malaysia launched its flagship smartphone series in Malaysia; the first country outside of China to receive the device. Great.
What’s not so great—the purchase of the phone is exclusive to loyal Mate Series owners only; part of the Exclusive Ownership Campaign.
What’s with the Exclusive Ownership Campaign?
If you’ve been falling the entire US trade ban on Huawei fiasco, you’d know that one of the biggest impacts on Huawei is the lack of Google Mobile Services (GMS) on its current crop of devices, including the Mate 30 series.
Without the crucial framework, the Mate 30 series, while it still runs an open-source version of Android, is sans any Google services or apps like Google Maps, YouTube, Drive, Photos, and Gmail. For Huawei users in China, this isn’t anything foreign since devices there do not have Google-anything. However, for the global audience the absence of GMS is understandably crippling.
Huawei’s “Plan B” is using its proprietary GMS replacement, aptly named Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). While Huawei likes consumers to think otherwise, HMS is far from ready or mature. The company is aggressively pushing for more developers to port Android apps to the platform (and its App Gallery) but building an ecosystem takes time. Still, it’s better than zero.
In an official letter posted on Huawei Malaysia’s Facebook page, Lii said, “…consumers need some time to understand as well as get familiarised with it (Huawei Mobile Services and EMUI 10). Hence, the Exclusive Ownership Campaign was first opened to previous Huawei Mate series users.”
Loyal Mate series users are first to have the chance to own the new Mate 30 and also enjoy exclusive gifts worth MYR1,155. This includes a Huawei Wireless In-car SuperCharge charger worth MYR289, DJI Osmo Mobile 3 worth MYR499, Huawei back casing worth MYR68 and Huawei Care worth MYR299 (includes 1-year extended warranty and 6-month screen crack warranty).
The catch? As a “Loyal Mate user,” you will need to have owned two Mate Series devices. The Exclusive Ownership Campaign offer kicked off from 3 October and ran until 22 October 2019. Pre-order buyers will be receiving their devices from 25 October 2019 onwards.
Now that the exclusive pre-order is over, Huawei is now opening up a referral programme where new customers can also pre-order the device. This will run from 26 October until 7 November 2019. Collection of smartphones will happen from 11 November until 11 December.
OK, so where’s the catch now?
Since it’s essentially a referral programme, to pre-order you’ll need a referral code—from an existing Mate 30 Pro (Exclusive Ownership Programme).
Before you pull your hair out, here’s an easy way. Country Director Liu has made public his personal referral code “33995” for interested pre-order buyers. But this is available only for a limited time—from 26-27 October only.
Liu also detailed that owners who refer five pre-order buyers will stand to receive a free Huawei Watch GT.
If you have questions, you can call the dedicated Huawei hotline for owners at 1800-22-0086 or the WhatsApp mobile contact that owners will receive upon collection of their Mate 30 device(s).
The Huawei Mate 30 series is priced from MYR3,899 for the Mate 30 Pro (8GB RAM + 256GB storage) and MYR2,799 for the Mate 30 (8GB RAM + 128GB storage).
Ready to pre-order? Head over to this page.
Read this announcement post for more detailed features of the Huawei Mate 30 series.
