Thursday, June 20, 2013: Huawei will spent 1.75 billion rupees (US$30 million) to build its brand and strengthen its retail presence in India, and also targets sales of 1 million smartphones over the next 6 months.
Victor Shan, Huawei’s president of India Device Business Development, said at the sidelines of the launch of its Ascend Mate phablet on Tuesday that the Chinese telecoms equipment and phone manufacturer will invest around 8 to 10 percent of its mobile devices revenue in India, The Hindu reported.
In 2012, the company’s revenue in India had been US$300 million and the spent will be mainly in strengthening its retail presence and brand building exercise, Shan added.
“The device is available in India from today onwards. We will be expanding our portfolio with the launch of more devices before Diwali [November 3, 2013],” Shan said. “By the end of this year, we expect to sell around 1 million smartphones including tablets.”
Huawei has started selling its mobile devices in partnership with retail stores like Croma, Ezone and online sites such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Shopclues, the report noted. The Ascend Mate phablet, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year, is retailing in India at 24,900 rupees (US$424.37), has a 1.5 GHz Quad Core hi-silicon processor and 16 core Graphic processing chipset.
Huawei’s plans to expand its branding strategy in India comes after the Indian government set up a testing lab in Bagalore to test equipment by Huawei and another Chinese telecom gear maker ZTE last month, following security concerns by its intelligence agencies. The Department of Telecommunications in February was also deliberating conferring the “domestic manufacturer” status on the Chinese companies due to security concerns raise dby the local industry and security agencies.
Electronics Bazaar, South Asia’s No.1 Electronics B2B magazine
