Spreading its Wings
In the last fiscal, the company started its enterprise division and set up an open channel for devices
The company is looking at India as a strategic market and providing end-to-end services for operators and the enterprise market. With a 6,000 employee base in India, the company has set up a manufacturing base in Chennai and global network operations center (GNOC) in Bengaluru.
In the fiscal, the company changed its focus from pure carrier play and entered the enterprise segment in a big way by investing $15 mn. Huawei is offering a complete bouquet of services which includes networking products—router and switch; unified communication, telepresence, and call center products; IT products—modular data center, cloud computing desktop, and virtual solution like wireless banking, GSM-R, and smart grid. The company is aggressively looking at verticals such as government, power, transport, education, and healthcare. On the channel part, the company has tied up with 12 value added partners, 3 national distributors, and 156 tier-2 partners.
The company has a strong base in 3G through ongoing contracts with Bharti, Idea, Tata DOCOMO, RCom, Aircel, BSNL, and MTNL. Even in 2G, the company has ongoing contracts with Idea, Tata, RCom, Aircel, BSNL, and MTNL and majority of new operators like Videocon, MTS, Uninor, Etisalat, Loop, and STel. The new operators will make a dent in future revenues depending upon spectrum auction results by DoT.
To give a big boost to managed services, the company opened the first GNOC outside of China in Bengaluru. The GNOC complements existing Network Operation Center (NOC) located in New Delhi. And will help in providing professional services such as network design, customer support, network optimization, systems integration, and network transformation for both in-country and off-shore operators. On managed services, the company is focusing on LTE and new cloud based business models and looking at the overall telecom and IT convergence that will fuel the next wave of growth.
In its current capacity it supports around 500 seats, 140,000+ sites, and covers all kind of technologies including wireless, wireline, and transmission. This will be a big plus as all the other vendors have been operating their NOC from a long time.
On TDD-LTE, the company successfully conducted the world’s first GSM/UMTS/ TDD-LTE trial on Aircel’s existing GSM/ UMTS network in India using Qualcomm’s MDM9600 multi-mode chipset. During the trial, the company demonstrated high speed data services including video streaming via YouTube, video on demand, and high definition video surveillance. The company has opened its TD-LTE account by signing deals with Bharti airtel for Karnataka. The deal includes planning, designing, supplying, and deploying TD-LTE solution comprising of network infrastructure and devices.
The company is also constructing R&D campus in Bengaluru with a total investment of $150 mn. The facility will double the capacity of current 2,500+ local staff once it is complete in 2013. In the year, the company set up 6 production lines by setting up 2 manufacturing facilities in Chennai.
On the devices front, the company has launched its product in the open market by focusing on top 32 cities in the country. The company launched the first cloud phones—Huawei Sonic and Huawei Ideos X3 in the Indian market. Huawei also launched Mediapad, the first 7” Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet, targeted at mobile professionals who are looking for a portable entertainment and business optimized tablet. Also launched was Huawei Honor and the Huawei Ideos X5 in the Indian market. Powered by the latest Gingerbread and ICS-ready (Android 4.0) smartphone, Huawei Honor provides up to 3 days of talk-time. On the devices front, the company launched data cards EC303C dongle and E560 MiFi in Indian market.
The entire last year turned out to be very satisfying for the Chinese telecom major, and with its renewed focus on enterprises offerings equipped with state-of-the-art technology and cost saving products, Huawei holds a lot of promise for the Indian telecommunications market.