Huawei Italy is launching a marketing campaign and boosting its distribution channels in an effort to double its share of the Italian handset market.
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Huawei wants to double its mobile device market share in Italy. |
"We are still relatively unknown compared to the giants of the industry," Huawei's executive director for Italy, Daniele De Grandis, told the Italian edition of Wired. "But, from a product, technology, build quality and price standpoint, we're not afraid to compete with other brands," added De Grandis.
The Chinese vendor is currently said to hold 4 to 5 per cent of the Italian handset market, and aims to increase this to 10 per cent this year, according to Wired.
Huawei plans to drive this growth by investing significantly in marketing, doubling the size of its distribution channel and boosting its partnerships with retailers and mobile operators. Of note, the company aims to increase its presence across the retail environment with the view to attracting prepaid customers to use its latest Ascend P2 and W1 smartphones.
Huawei Italy Managing Director Zhao Ming said that the initial focus will be on increasing brand awareness, and then moving to promote the technical capabilities of Huawei's handset products.
"We have the best LTE network technology having been involved with its development since 2004," Zhao told Wired. "Both Vodafone Italy and Wind Telecom currently use our LTE equipment."
Separately, Huawei has agreed a deal with Bouygues Telecom that will see the French operator offering its own-brand handsets manufactured by the Chinese vendor, according to Telecom Paper. The Huawei-made Bs 401 Android smartphones will become available later this month for €159 as a standalone product or from €9.90 with a subscription.
The low-cost Android smartphone, which has previously only been sold in emerging markets, has a dual-core 1 GHz processor, 4-inch screen, 5-megapixel camera and GPS.
For more:
- see this Wired article (translated via Google Translate)
- see this Telecom Paper article (sub. req.)
- see this separate Telecom Paper article (sub. req.)
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