Huawei set to become world’s No. 2 smartphone maker

By 2018, Huawei Technologies Co would become the world’s second-largest smartphone maker it was said on Thursday at the IFA consumer electronics trade fair in Berlin where the firm launched two new phones – 5-inch Nova and 5.5-inch Nova – in the mid-priced segment.

Reiterating statements he made at last year’s IFA consumer trade fair that Huawei aims to become the world’s largest smartphone maker in four or five years from now, the chief executive of the company’s consumer business group, Mr. Richard Yu said: “This year and next will be critical for the success, we are working very hard. When the company is number two is the time to predict when it will become number one.”

At present, Huawei is the world’s third-largest producer of smartphones with an 8.9 percent market share in the second quarter, according to Gartner, well behind Apple Inc.’s 12.9 percent and Samsung Electronics Co.’s 22.3 percent.

The company plans to ship 140 million devices in 2016 which is a 30 percent increase over the past year and Yu has said he is convinced Huawei can achieve this target.

Huawei has been particularly successful in its China home market, where it faces competition from other local companies like Oppo and Vivo.
“The competition in China is a concern to me, but not a big one. We have the latest technology, and this is what people want,” Yu said.

However, he admitted that in the US, Huawei was still a runner-up, saying “I have to admit, that our management in the U.S. was too weak in the past, so we changed it. It will take time to build trust in the U.S.”