China's Huawei has changed their previous business model of flooding the market with cheap, no brand mobile phones and has risen to become a serious contender for Samsung and Apple and a globally recognizable brand.
According to Forbes, Huawei Technologies is advancing rapidly into new markets worldwide. With an 8.3 percent market share, it has already become the world's number three smartphone brand. In Europe, in particular, Huawei is growing at an unprecedented new brand image.
Huawei started out in Shenzhen, in 1987, as a producer of phone switches. Formed its humble beginnings, the Chinese company has been growing up with the city's nascent electronics industry to eventually become, by 2012, the global leader in telecommunications networks.
Today, Huawei's prime consumer product is composed of smartphones. Still far behind Apple and Samsung, the company managed to sell last year around 108 million smartphones.
This year, Huawei Technologies sold 28.8 million phones in quarter one, which makes more than a 10 million unit year-on-year increase, according to Gartner. In the same period Apple went into decline and Samsung stayed flat.
Huawei was able to achieve this new global market position through a very active initiative to sharply increase the quality of their feature phones. To this, the Chinese company has added major ad campaigns aimed to increase brand's visibility in the world.
The Chinese high-tech company once found its niche selling its handsets cheaper than the big brands of the world. Its brand was mediocre but cheap at that time. But now, all of this has changed.
Illustrating Huawei's ambition to become the number one smartphone brand in the world is also its recent lawsuit against Samsung Electronics. According to Reuters, the company has announced on Wednesday, May 25, that it sued Samsung Electronics, claiming infringement of smartphone patents. This is the first intellectual property challenge of the Chinese company against the world's top mobile maker.
