Huawei wants to change your mind about its smartphones.

The Chinese company has become a world leader in smartphones in recent years, eschewing its humble, budget-phone-centric roots.


Based in China's electronic hub of Shenzhen, Huawei has long aimed to be a global brand, and over the last few years has worked hard to shake off first impressions from its early budget phones.


The company started off as a telecoms equipment provider, as well as a maker of Wi-Fi dongles, before entering the phone market with cheap handsets. But the last few years have seen Huawei impress with premium flagship devices like the dual-camera Huawei P9 and the Nexus 6P, which it collaborated with Google on.
And it's found great success, toppling foes like Xiaomi and Lenovo to claim the number one position in China, as well as clinching the number three spot in global rankings, according to a report by IDC Research this year.
"We don't want the consumers to just love our price tag, we want our consumers to love our product," Clement Wong, Huawei's VP for global product marketing, said of the company's move into the premium space. "We're quite solid, we may not take a rocket to the moon, but we're focused on making the product good."
The company certainly has made strides to differentiate itself in a competitive market. For instance, it partnered with Leica, a prestigious photography brand out of Germany, on the aforementioned P9. Huawei had to battle accusations it was just licensing the Leica brand name -- both companies issued statements denying this -- and had to deal with botched social marketing efforts, but the result is undeniable. The dual-camera device takes some of the best photos CNET has seen a smartphone take.
"One of the keys to the company's revival has been a big change in Chinese consumer perception -- Huawei's phones are no longer viewed as embarrassing cheap low-end products, but instead as higher-end devices," said IDC's Bryan Ma.

Big in the world

Huawei employs a large amount of staff -- over 176,000 globally, with 40,000 foreign employees located around the world. The company invests plenty of cash, to the tune of about $6.4 billion, in research and development centers, although many of these are devoted to its telecoms business.


These international investments seem to have paid off, with Huawei finding a second home in Europe. According to IDC's Ma, the bulk of Huawei's shipments are in China, accounting for around 60 percent, but the next biggest region is the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), where the company ships 20 percent of its phones.
Huawei currently has a market share of around 18 percent in Spain and 19 percent in Finland, and the company is looking towards the growing Asia Pacific market as the next battleground.
"The Asia Pacific is critical for us to be successful, the top markets there to grow are Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines," said Colin Giles, vice president of Huawei's consumer group. "We've done well in Myanmar, too."
As Huawei continues its new path of global dominance, pushing aside favourites such as Xiaomi, the next big thing may not be a $60 billion startup, but an almost 30-year old telecoms company that seems to have finally found its groove.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11

Image
DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11 – How DX12 will transform PC  gaming on Windows 10 DIRECTX 12 VS DIRECTX 11 – WHY DOES IT MATTER? Windows 10  has arrived and, along with integrated Cortana, Xbox One game streaming and a fancy new web browser, one of its key features is DirectX 12, the latest version of the operating system’s gaming API. A software layer that sits between the hardware that powers our computers and the software that runs on them,  DirectX is at the heart of the vast majority of games that run on Windows.  The other major gaming API is OpenGL, which as its name suggests is an open source API. Both offer very similar key functions, but it’s DirectX that tends to be at the heart of most bigger games. Microsoft talks up the amazing new capabilities for every new release of DirectX, but with DirectX 12 it really does have some key new features, at least when it comes to improving performance. It also has some new effects tools and functions for mak...
Read more

Android N's "Freeform Windows"

Last week, we wrote about the " freeform window " mode in the Android N Developer Preview. Brief mentions in the developer documents and hints in the code pointed to Android someday displaying apps in resizable floating windows, just like in a desktop OS. Freeform window mode isn't normally accessible in the current dev preview, but shortly after the post, we were contacted by reader  Zhuowei Zhang  with instructions on how to make it work. We'll get to the instructions, but first let's talk about what's actually here. Freeform window mode is just what we imagined. It's a dead ringer for  Remix OS —multiple Android apps floating around inside windows—and it might be the beginnings of a desktop operating system . It works on Android N phones and tablets, and once the mode is enabled, you'll see an extra button on thumbnails in the Recent Apps screen. To the left of the "X" button that pops up after a second or tw...
Read more

The Chord Mojo turns good headphones into great ones

Image
The best gadget you never knew you wanted Audio processing isn’t sexy. Better sound doesn’t lend itself to easy marketing through numbers or pretty posters, and so many companies treat it as an afterthought when designing their products. The  blissful ignorance  of "good enough" audio pervades the world of consumer technology, leaving only a niche of audio enthusiasts supporting a few boutique hi-fi manufacturers. Things have been like this for quite some time, but recently a new gadget was introduced that bridges the gap between the many and the few, and its name is the  Chord Mojo . The Mojo is an audio processor and amplifier that’s smaller than a pack of cards yet delivers the awesome performance of much larger rivals. Honestly, I think its size works to its disadvantage because it looks like, and is, a portable unit you can plug into your phone and use off its 10-hour battery. By audiophile standards, it’s almost  too  practical. But ...
Read more