Chinese smartphone maker Huawei will not be investing money to bring inexpensive phones to the market but will bet on word-of-mouth marketing to win over customers.
“One way to get the market share is [to] launch a ₹15,000 phone at ₹8,000 and probably lose money,” P. Sanjeev, vice president – sales, Huawei Consumer Business Group India, told The Hindu.
“It is not so important for Huawei and ‘Honor’ to do that,” he said. ‘Honor’ is Huawei’s online brand of smartphones.
‘Number 2 brand’
He said Huawei had already become the world’s number two brand.
“We have 30 countries with 15% market share, we have 22 countries with 20% market share in smartphones,” he claimed.
The success for the company, he said, came from its ability to invest 10% of its global revenue in R&D. “In the last decade, we spent $45 billion. So there is no point in going down that road of building market share… we want it to be world-of-mouth.”
About sales of ‘Honor,’ he said, “If you look at the sales number, we are doubling with every model of ‘Honor’ series. And we hope to continue that.”
Huawei has unveiled a new phone — Honor 9i — that comes with four cameras — two in the front and two at the back, targeted at young consumers.
The device, priced at ₹17,999, will be available for sale on Flipkart from October 14. The smartphone will have Huawei’s eight core Kirin 659 chipset, 5.5 inch display, 4GB RAM and 64 GB internal storage and 3340 mAh battery. Mr. Sanjeev said, “Our team has spent extensive time studying what consumers in this segment prefer and we have worked to raise the bar each and every time, creating industry’s new bench marks.”
