Huawei Looks To Shift 100 Million Smartphones In 2015

Phone manufacturer Huawei has revealed it plans higher smartphone shipments than ever before in 2015 as the company looks to establish itself as one of the world’s leading mobile device players.

Revealing that it had shipped around 75 million smartphones during 2014, a 40 percent year-on-year increase, Shao Yang, vice president of marketing for Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, said the company would be looking to increase this by over a third in order to gain market share from the likes of Samsung and Apple.

On the up

The bulk of this growth will come from high-end smartphones, the company says, with Huawei having launched several such devices last year, including the Ascend P7 smartphone (pictured left) and Mate 7 phablet. The company also launched Honor, a purely Western-facing brand selling high-end devices, last October as it looked to gain entry into the European and American markets.

“We are giving up the low end of the market,” said Richard Yu, chief executive officer of Huawei’s consumer unit. “Many vendors are suffering. Only two vendors have had a good life: Apple and Samsung.”

Yu added the company was aiming for $16 billion in revenue from the consumer business unit responsible for smartphones and tablets, in 2015, with the portion of smartphone sales coming from international markets hoped to rise to more than 60 percent this year from 52 percent last year.

Market analysis ranked Huawei fifth overall in global smartphone shipments during the third quarter of 2014, with its 5.1 percent share trailing Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi and LG according to researcher Strategy Analytics.

The Chinese company made the claim whilst unveiling its 2014 year end report, which revealed that revenue from its consumer business rose 30 percent to $12.2 billion last year, the first time it had topped the $10bn mark.

However, the company’s 2014 shipments were behind its internal target of 80 million units, a minor surprise, as Huawei seemed to be well on course to hit this mark after announcing its last quarterly results in October.

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