Anand Narang discusses some of the developments which Huawei will undertake in India in the coming years.
1. What are the investment and expansion plans of Huawei’s handset business in India?
Huawei has lined up a $ 2- billion investment war chest for India over the next five years. The bulk of this will go into building a 20 acre R&D campus in Bangalore’s upscale Whitfield suburb and a 30,000 sq ft equipment factory at Sriperumbudur, on the outskirts of Chennai. By 2015, the company intends to have between 10,000 and 15,000 direct employees in India, including R&D, manufacturing and managed services.
2. What are the new products in pipeline?
Huawei India is soon launching a device portfolio including 3G Feature Phone, Smart Phone, Tablets and Data cards. Our feature-rich 3G handsets will cater to both entry-level and hi-end smartphones, while our pricing will shake the retail market. We plan to launch Android-powered smartphones at sub-Rs.10,000 while our tablets will give a boom to the 3G market. In the next 12 months, Huawei will be a household name. Huawei India has recently launched Android Smartphone IDEOSâ„¢ powered by the latest iteration of AndroidTM 2.2 (also known as ‘Froyo’). IDEOS is attractively priced at Rs 8499 and available via Aircel and Tata Docomo outlets. IDEOS redefines the “entry-level” concept of smartphones by combining high-quality hardware, premium technology and software with a high price-to-performance ratio.
3. What are the latest trends in apps space?
Apps have become part of our daily life. With applications such as messaging, gaming, listening to music, watching video, social networking, shopping, web browsing, news consumption, etc. consumers are spending an ever-increasing amount of time in front of their mobile devices. Increase in mobile usage enables new users evolve into Mature User and as the user becomes more mature, there comes usage of high end or more complex application. With social networking, transferring photos from mobiles have become popular. Video Calling is emerging as the next BIG app. We’ve aggregated some exciting applications for the pre-load in our Open market portfolio. Huawei will also in due course introduce its application store on open market devices.
4. How is the market response to Android phones in the market?
The advance of smartphones has been a major mobile storyline in 2010 and Android saw a significant jump there. Recent stats shows Android gained 16.3 percent market share in smartphone category worldwide in year 2010 and prediction by market analysts is it will enjoy 51.2 percent market share by 2014. One of the major reasons of success of Android OS is that it is open source which gave boost to the Application developer community. In short span of time over lakh of applications have been developed and this number is growing constantly.
5. How are you leveraging the enterprise market and 3G space?
3G services have been launched by 6 Operators and EVDO by 4 Operators. 3 G has potential to create next revolution in Indian communications industry because it opens the doors to improved wireless services. It gives high clarity, real time streaming and high speed internet access anywhere. We have helped operators set up infrastructure to support 3G services. We are also planning to introduce HSDPA and HSPA devices in open market to provide better communication platform to people. Huawei devices will introduce 3G Feature Phone, Smart Phone, Tablets and data cards which will make heavy data transfer possible, real time video and music streaming, online gaming and excellent quality of audio communication on mobile.
