Huawei announced a partnership with Leica Camera, intended to create “a powerhouse in the reinvention of smartphone photography”.

The alliance was described as “a co-operation with shared premium ambitions and spirit”, and Huawei said that more details of the work, which will span research and development, design, co-engineering, user experience, marketing and retail distribution, will follow.

Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, said: “We choose our partners carefully, and with this extraordinary collaboration we are offering our wide customer base and consumers the best elements of two expert brands in harmony: combining innovation and design, enhancing the user experience and continuing to inspire amazing advancement in human technology through exceptional premium imaging quality.”

Andreas Kaufmann, chairman of the Leica Camera supervisory board, said: “I’m pleased and convinced that the traditional German medium-sized company Leica Camera will bring its values and comprehensive expertise in optical engineering to the long-term partnership with Huawei in order to achieve the best possible imaging results in the field of smartphone photography – and to take it to the next level of quality.”

Huawei is, of course, far from the first smartphone maker to partner with an imaging specialist. As far back as 2005, Nokia formed a partnership with Carl Zeiss in this field.