Is Huawei preparing an answer to iPhone?
beijing — Huawei Technologies is aiming to grow mobile shipments by only a modest amount in 2017, as it gears up to go headto-head with the hotly-anticipated 10th-anniversary edition of Apple’s iPhone.
The world’s No.3 smartphone maker, which in 2016 declared it will someday surpass both Apple and Samsung Electronics in market share, is shooting for shipments of 140 million to 150 million units in 2017 — up marginally from 139 million in 2016. But it’s also putting the finishing touches on its most powerful device yet, the Mate 10.
Huawei is the largest of a coterie of Chinese smartphone makers that have grabbed global market share via affordable phones with premium specifications. The Mate 10 will debut right around the time Apple is expected to take the lid off its own flagship device, but will trump the iPhone in many aspects, said Richard Yu, chief of Huawei’s consumer division.
“We will have an even more powerful product,” Yu said in an interview. “The Mate 10, which has much longer battery life with a full-screen display, quicker changing speed, better photographing capability and many other features that will help us compete with Apple.”
Yu issued his challenge after Huawei reported a sharp fall in revenue growth in the first half, as smartphone sales tapered off from the dizzying pace of 2016. It posted a 15 per cent rise in revenue to 283.1 billion yuan ($42 billion) in the first six months of 2017 — half the pace at which sales grew last year.
Its breakneck expansion in 2016 came at a cost: Huawei’s earnings grew at their slowest pace in five years in 2016, as it sank money into 5G research and a marketing blitz to gain ground in smartphones. — Bloomberg