Tip UsHuawei, the Chinese mobile phone manufacturer who have previously focused on partnering exclusively with operators are launching their own brand mobile phone in the UK in September.
Up until this point they have only manufactured smartphones for other companies to rebrand but after successfully launching Huawei branded handsets in India and Australia they are now changing strategies.
Mark Mitchinson, who is the company’s UK executive vice president has stated they will be trying to gain a market share between 4 and 5 percent. However with a market already dominated by smartphone giants such as Apple, HTC, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, Roberta Cozza, a UK-based analyst at Gartner says they will have to invest “very heavily” to compete with them.
HTC initially struggled to establish themselves due to brand awareness but have shown just what can be achieved with a great range of smartphones and good advertising. Roberta Cozza continued: “The problem they have is the brand. It’s a limitation for them.”
The debut handset from Huawei will be the budget price Hauwei Blaze, it is rumored to go on sale in September for around £100. It will apparently be running Android Gingerbread 2.3, with a 3.2 inch touchscreen, 3.2 megapixel camera, 256MB of RAM and 512MB integrated storage. They are currently in talks with operators such as O2 and Vodafone to bring the phone to the UK market.
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