Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's Consumer business, has announced the company's new strategic goals. He expects Huawei and Honor to become the world's largest smartphone manufacturer this year. The company will continue with the dual-brand strategy and aim for the Huawei brand to eventually become world leader, while Honor targets fourth on the global market and second in China.
Most market researchers currently put Huawei in third place on the world smartphone market, including the Honor phones. The company's sales volume is very close to Apple, and in certain quarters in the past year, Huawei overtook Apple for market share. However, the gap with market leader Samsung is still large, with the latter shipping around 50 percent more smartphones than Huawei.
Yu said the consumer business "has arrived at a brand new stage", after realising all the goals he set for the company in 2012. These included transitioning from a white-label ODM producer to an OEM brand and moving from low-end handsets and feature phones into the premium smartphone market, with its own user interface and chipsets.
Huawei's consumer business led growth at the company last year, with revenues up 45.1 percent CNY 348.9 billion. This makes it the largest contributor to Huawei's group revenue, ahead of its carriers business. Honor meanwhile grew shipments over 27 percent and increased its international sales by 170 percent.
