Huawei Aims To Be Top Phone Seller
Huawei isn’t satisfied with pushing Apple from second to third in the smartphones shipped metric, they want to be number one and they want people to know.
To beat out Apple, Huawei sold more that 95 million units in the first half of the year, with an anticipated 180 million in sales by the end of the year.
Huawei now needs to outperform Samsung to take the global lead in shipping phones.
Consumer division chief Richard Yu told reporters that Huawei will be number one by Q4 of 2019, a herculean but achievable task.
Yu commented: “I think it’s no problem that we become the global No.2 next year; in Q4 next year, it’s possible we become No.1”
The first obvious hurdle for the phone manufacturer is being denied access to the lucrative American market on the basis of national security. Spooked carriers are also refusing to pick up Hauwei’s handsets due to the tainted image coming from legislators in the United States.
Despite consistently denying the accusations, Huawei still hasn’t convinced the United States and some of its allies from blocking the sale of phones, either in specific regions or wholesale.
Beyond legislative blocks, a slowing and extraordinarily competitive market makes for a hostile environment to try and grow in. It may be that the phone manufacturer hopes to eat up the market share of less mature handsets, such as those offered by Xiaomi and Oppo.
Despite this block, Huawei is confident in its European, Middle Eastern and African sales which delivered an impressive 73 per cent growth in the previous two quarters. Growth in sales from China alone grew 37 per cent.
To bolster this effort, Huawei plans to open 10,000 retail stores globally alongside pushing hard into 5G hand devices for the final quarter of this year.