Huawei to open development center in India

BANGALORE, INDIA: Huawei Technologies, a China-based telecom equipment manufacturer, announced on Tuesday the establishment of a new product development center here.

The new center will design and develop software and test mobile handsets for the Indian market, where it plans to build the brand in a big way.

P. Sanjeev, sales director, Huawei Devices, said, “The new center would take up entire design, feature, battery services, application, software content of the product. We have four product centers globally and one among them is the India product center.”

The company aims to achieve 15 per cent market share in the handsets market by 2015 and 5-7 per cent by 2013.

Plans to launch tablets in Q3

Anand Narang, director-Marketing, Huawei, said, “We will launch tablets in the third quarter of 2011 by July-September, adding that its pricing will be competitive.”

Plans to invest $2 billion in 5 years

As part of its new strategy for this year, the company also announced that it has planned an investment of $2 billion in India across all the categories.

The investment, which will be made over the next five years, will also focus on augmenting the Chinese firm's capabilities in local sourcing, increasing headcount, while scaling up the potential of its research and development and manufacturing units.

The new strategy plan also includes setting up of local organizations and resources.

Launched three new smartphones

The company also launched three smartphones for the Indian market - IDEOS X5, IDEOS X2 and IDEOS Chat, targeted at young users. The new smartphones series are powered by Qualcomm chipsets.

Apart from the launch of smartphones, the company said they have also set up a smartphone toll-free service to address the queries of the smartphone users.

It also announced that it would launch eight to ten mobile handset models this year with a price range of above Rs.5000.

Speaking about the product, P. Sanjeev, added, “We are focusing on the reach of the product rather than the numbers. In the initial phase our smartphones will be available for sale across 10 cities through our partners Redington and Ingram Micro.”

Huawei, a $28 billion company, holds 50,000 patents, serves almost 45 operators and is spread over 140 countries with 15 regional headquarters.