Huawei Unperturbed By Other Chinese Brands In India: Peter Zhai
Chinese tech giant Huawei recently hit the Indian shores with the launch of their smartphones P20 Pro and P20 Lite. Some of us might be unaware about Huawei but it is the world’s third largest smartphone brand and shipped 153 million units in 2017 along with Honor holding more than 10 percent market share, only behind Samsung and Apple.
As Huawei aims to establish themselves and capture the premium smartphone market in the country, Peter Zhai, President, Huawei India Consumer Business on his visit to India talks to BW Businessworld about their strategies.
Huawei as a smartphone brand is not very popular among Indian consumers. How will increase your brand equity in the Indian market?
I think just by telling the truth we can increase our brand equity. Huawei is third largest global vendor of smartphones in the world. Globally we are very famous but in Indian market we have just stepped in so it will take time for the people to know us.
That is the reason why we are not expecting that our products can just boost up the market. This could be achieved gradually by letting people to know us, get familiar with us, try us and then favourite us. We are confident that all our products are of good quality, innovative and best products so we don’t need to worry about the timing or our late entry in India.
Which brands do you think will give competition to Huawei’s P20 Pro?
I don’t care about other Chinese brand that much, we do different brand positioning. We already have Honor brand in India to target the masses but Huawei’s P20 Pro is for top segment of the consumers and it is in line with the products like Apple iPhone X or Samsung Galaxy S9. When compared with other Chinese brands, we are much different and not what they are.
India as second biggest market for Huawei after China. After China, can India become the hub of manufacturing smartphones?
India is always at the top of our market list. I think in two to three years, Indian market will grow very fast but maybe it won’t be the second biggest market for Huawei yet. Now that we are here, we will develop our business but how fast will we grow depends on the market scenario.
The Indian market is very unique, the telecommunication investments, competition environment, and the government regulations are totally different than other markets which is very promising but there are also various challenges. This is the reason we wanted to enter India at the right time with the right products.
What kind of market challenges do you think will be faced by Huawei?
The Indian market is very unique, large population which is promising but there also is fierce competition. The major challenge for us in India is the presence of a lot of local and global brands. There are too many brands using the strategy and tactics to win the market but product wise I didn’t see many products are comparable enough with our devices.
That is the reason why many brands enter and leave the Indian market very soon.
Every year we see “hero” brands being disappearing from the market because you can win consumers heart only with great products, not by great marketing.
To overcome this challenge, you need to be patient in the market and consumers should be told the truth.
Where are the P20 Pro and Lite manufactured? Are you planning to establish any manufacturing unit in India?
For P20 Pro and Lite, we cannot disclose where they are manufactured. On a global level we shipped more than 153 million smartphones last year so we have enough capability and enough resources to manufacture devices.
I think the current manufacturing units in India (for Honor phones) are sufficient to fulfil the demands of Indian market. Of course when the demand will increase in the future, we will consider increasing our local manufacturing resources.
The market of smartwatches haven’t quite picked up universally. What kind of growth do you expect for your wearable devices? Planning to launch another smartwatch in India?
We have already launched our smartwatches in the market earlier and we believe that this market will be growing very fast. Personally speaking I don’t feel that the market of wearables will be saturated in the short term, even in the future it will grow.
In India, the market of traditional watches is still growing so gradually smartwatches will replace certain segments of the watch wearers. Then there will be more potential population switching to wearable devices which is why I feel that it will be a huge opportunity for doing consumer business.
Which features in P20 Pro do you like the most?
I think my favourite is the Photography function. I am not good at taking photos but AI chipset and hardware on this device helps me in becoming a professional photographer.
How many Huawei smartphone units do you think will be sold till next year? Also how much market share are you expecting?
The smartphone market is always evolving so today’s forecast of the industry can’t be very reliable to predict the future. It all depends on the factor that how fast the consumers are getting familiar with us and using our products.
The market share is not a target for us, our target is that we want to do everything step by step by introducing the right products at the right time in the market.
Our goals for India are not to have a chunk of market share for short term, we are here to build a valuable brand for Indian market for long term.
_20240427164715original_image_39.webp)
