Huawei Adopts Device Focus in India

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. plans to focus on the development of its mobile devices business in India this year, with 15-20 percent of the company's revenues in the mobile-crazy country likely to come from the sale of mobile handsets and other wireless devices during 2011.

The Chinese giant launched its own-branded handsets in India during 2010, and is set to make inroads into a highly competitive market this year. Huawei plans to introduce a number of new handsets as well as other wireless devices such as netbooks and digital photo frames in the Indian market in the coming months, and is lining up launches from low-end devices to high-end smartphones to capitalize on the growing interest in mobile data services and the introduction of 3G services by a number of India's leading mobile players. (See Airtel Launches 3G in India, and .)

The vendor showed off some of its devices at the recent India Telecom event. (See .)

The Indian handset market is extremely cluttered, with a number of Indian and global handset players competing for market share. Huawei plans to differentiate its products by focusing on the delivery of mobile applications through an apps store that mobile operators can wholesale and offer to their customer base. (See .)

"We will soon be launching the Digital Shopping Mall, a mobile application store," Huawei India Executive Director (Product & Services) A Sethuraman told Light Reading Asia recently. (See .)

"It will enable the operators to provide a strong mobile application store to their users without investing in one. It will be technology agnostic and will be available on all mobile operating systems such as Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian," added Sethuraman, who said Huawei is currently in talks with four or five Indian operators that are interested in offering the Digital Shopping Mall to their mobile customers.

Before the launch on the open market Huawei has been active in the Indian devices market through bundling deals with the operators. Huawei has a strong presence in the CDMA low-end mobile phones and dongles segment.

Huawei also plans to add to its existing retail outlet network by adding further direct sales channels to its existing 450 service stations in India.

The company recently announced that it would be investing US$2 billion in the Indian market. (See .)

Gagandeep Kaur, India Editor, Light Reading