Shao Yang, Vice President of Marketing at Huawei Consumer, said the company is ramping up production capacity for the Ascend Mate7 and P7, and Huawei expects shipments of mid- to high-end devices to continue to increase in Q4. Huawei attributed the strong growth to its increased marketing efforts, including the 'Make it Possible' ad campaign and a number of sponsorships. Yang told Reuters in an interview that, Huawei plans to increase its global marketing budget at least 30 percent in 2015, compared with USD 440 million this year.
The company has shipped 51 million smartphones globally in the first three quarters of 2014, about 63.8 percent of its annual shipment target of 80 million. Shao said he expected quarter-on-quarter shipments growth of up to 80 percent in the fourth quarter. A little more than half of Huawei's smartphone shipments went to China in the third quarter. Elsewhere, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific recorded the strongest growth. LTE phones accounted for over 34 percent of shipments in Q3.
