Huawei aims to triple Smartphone sales

Huawei Technologies Co., China's biggest maker of phone equipment, aims to nearly triple its smartphone sales in 2012, the chief executive of its devices unit said Monday, after launching what it called the world's fastest phone. Huawei aims to sell 50 million to 60 million smartphones this year, up from 20 million in 2011, Wan Biao told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It hopes to achieve this partly by more than doubling its spending on marketing, to between 4% and 5% of sales, compared with 2% in 2011. Huawei presented the Ascend D Quad smartphone at this year's Mobile World Congress. The device is equipped with a quad-core processor that the company makes itself, making it twice as powerful as most smartphones, which run on duo-core processors. The phone's retail price hasn't yet been announced, but Wan said it will likely be between EUR400 and EUR500. This compares with EUR480 for Nokia Corp.'s (NOK) latest Lumia model, the 900. Outside China the company will focus on growth in Japan, Europe and the U.S., and aims to launch handsets for use on new fourth-generation, or 4G, networks in the second half of the year, Wan said. The global smartphone market is dominated by Apple Inc. (AAPL) and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (005930.SE), but Wan is confident that the popularity of Huawei's products will grow. Almost half Huawei's 140,000 staff works in research and development and the Chinese firm spends $2.5 billion or 10% of sales on it. The company is working hard to improve its products and iron out any consumer niggles, such as by boosting audio quality and maximizing battery life. Wan said Huawei's smartphones last for two days without recharging--considerably longer than other smartphones including Apple's iPhone. The company is also in talks with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) about introducing a device that runs on the U.S. company's Windows Phone operating system. Huawei's smartphones currently run on Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android. Wan also said the company is open to the possibility of small acquisitions that add technical knowledge, such as the U.K. photonics research laboratory it bought last year, dedicated to fiber-optic research. He didn't rule out a stock market listing for Huawei and said the employee-owned company "is open to any future possibilities," but added that it has no concrete plans as yet. Huawei is cash rich, however, with 38 billion yuan ($6 billion) to its name, so it is under no pressure to raise funds From: wsj