Huawei To Begin Manufacturing Its Smartphones In India By 2019

Huawei has high hopes from the Indian handset market. To uplift the belief, they have recently launched its flagship smartphone Huawei Mate 20 Pro. As per Wally Yang, Senior Product Marketing Director, Huawei Consumer Business Group, Mate 20 Pro is the best smartphone of 2018 from the bouquet of Huawei.

Huawei is also pushing their presence in the offline channels with an aim to be present in more than 1,000 retail stores across India, by 2020. When asked about Huawei’s expectations for Mate 20 Pro in India, he told BW Businessworld that, “Numbers is not a very serious milestone to achieve for us, our target is to let more people experience our products. The reason we are trying offline push is so that more consumers can experience the superior quality our products have and numbers will follow automatically”, said Yang.

Huawei has already tied up with Croma stores where Mate 20 Pro handsets will be available starting from December 10 across India.

Six months ago, Huawei entered the Indian premium handset market with the P20 series and now they are back in this segment with their latest Mate 20 Pro. Talking about P20 series’ success, Yang said that Huawei was able to sell more than 10 million unit within six months across the globe.

According to research firm IDC, Huawei (including Honor) has been on the second spot in the global smartphone market share list since last two quarters (Q2 and Q3 2018).

During Q3 2018, Huawei captured 14.6 per cent of market share, which is more than Apple (13.2 per cent) and only lesser than Samsung (20.3 per cent).

According to Counterpoint, Huawei and Honor had a combined market share of around 3 per cent in India since the two last quarters.

Huawei’s smartphone business in India will be primarily focused on premium segment only while its sub-brand Honor will be present in the budget and mid-range smartphone segment. Although Honor phones are manufactured in India in partnership with Flex, Huawei’s flagship phones are still imported. However, Huawei has plans to begin manufacturing of its smartphone in India from the coming year.

Huawei is also eyeing to take an edge over the market with its 5G handsets when the whole ecosystem is ready for the spectrum including telecom operators.