Huawei's CEO, Wan Biao, has all but announced his plans to topple Samsung and Apple from their thrones at the top of the mobile device heap. At MWC in Barcelona last week, Huawei brought its Ascend P2, the successor to the P1, which has already sold a million units in the last three months.
Wan has a five-year-plan for Huawei, he told Business Insider. The company is currently in the midst of establishing itself as a brand in customers' eyes — a good first step for a company whose names most people couldn't pronounce only a year ago. (It's hwa-way, by the way.) He said that the road to success involves "building better phones than Samsung or Apple."
As a testament to Huawei's potential, the company boasted about the P2's 150Mbps connection, the fastest of any phone on the market. Huawei first gained traction by selling unbranded phones to carriers, and keeping its devices relatively affordable. The Ascend P2 will sell for €399 (about $519) when it hits the market in the second quarter, Reuters reports, far less than its competitors' flagship phones. Samsung's Galaxy and Apple's iPhone will both run you about $650, for reference. The P2 has a large screen and employs energy-saving technology developed by Huawei, showing that the Chinese company has learned to appeal to consumers with features they crave.
Aside from building great phones, one of the company's priorities is probably to distance itself from accusations of spying. No concrete evidence has been uncovered, but the US House Intelligence Committee has labeled Huawei a "national security threat," as its founder and president is Ren Zhengfei, a former engineer of China's People's Liberation Army (the military arm of its Communist party).
When asked if Huawei could really join Apple and Samsung in the top tier, Wan told Business Insider through a translator, "I can’t predict who the other two will be."
Ohh, burn.
ZTE, another Chinese company, also has every intention of making itself an indispensable presence in the cellphone market. The company has ambitious plans to increase smartphone sales by 30 percent next year, by concentrating on the US, China, Europe and Australia with a higher-quality but less diverse lineup of products. He Shiyou, head of the mobile services division, told Reuters that ZTE employees consider themselves second-tier, in the ranks of HTC, Sony and Motorola. "We have to be as aggressive as possible," he said.
It sounds like boasting now, but Samsung said the same thing a few years ago, and companies don't make these claims lightly. It's up to the market to dictate where Huawei and ZTE will be in the years to come, but they could be chasing a swelling a bubble that's due to burst.
(Edited by Lois Heyman)
