Huawei, which recently overtook Apple globally in sales, is confident of achieving a similar feat in India. Honor, Huawei’s brand for mid- to high-end smartphones, completed three years in India last month; the company marked it with the launch of a new product, first four-camera 4G VoLTE-enabled smartphone Honor 9i for Rs 17,999. Peter Zhai, president, consumer business group, Huawei India, speaks with Mansi Taneja about company’s future plans and making India its number one market outside of China.

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

What kind of growth you are seeing in the Indian market? In the next five years, do you see yourself as the top smartphone maker here?

Indian market is potentially large. Any brand here should have patience rather than doing anything quickly. One should deliver better, good quality products in the market. We have been present in India since last three years and have learned a lot of things. India is a big market with diversified consumers. We are focused on winning customers' heart rather than market share. Currently, revenues from Indian market are not so high in our overseas business but our ambition is to make India number one market outside China. Definitely, we would be a successful brand. Our aim is to build up our brand as a favourite one for all the Indian consumers. If consumers do not like you, your product is not good enough or cost-effective, how can you talk about market share? Every year, we see a lot of brands come up and then go, their market share booms and then comes down. Huawei does not want to be that kind of market share driven company. If we are liked by our consumers, if they are satisfied, success will naturally come as a result. We will close this year with 10% market share and it will grow gradually. We expect to achieve over 100% growth in consumer business this year.

Do you plan to launch low-cost phones, especially feature phones which constitute about 70% of the Indian mobile market?

No plan as of now to get into that segment. For all Honor products, quality and user experience is the topmost priority and with reasonable margins, it should be sustainable for us to invest in research and development to lead in technology.

But 4G feature phones are the talk of the town since Reliance Jio announced the launch of such a phone.

4G feature phones are temporary products which are used by carriers (telecom operators) to educate consumers about the market and to inculcate such habits in them to use 4G. We are here for a long-term business for next 10-15 years. For consumers, our prices will be little a bit high, that is true, but after experiencing the product, they won’t care much about the price difference.

How soon would 5G technology become a reality?

5G is currently a hot topic but it will take time to be ready and then mature. The commercial trials are likely to start next year and Huawei is leading in this segment. Huawei is present across all value chains. Huawei began investing in 5G research and development in 2009 and plans to invest $600 million globally in this technology by 2018.

Your competitors like Samsung already have inbuilt digital payments applications in their handsets. How soon would you launch Huawei Pay in India?

We are working on this. We are committed to digital inclusion in India.