Chinese vendor Huawei, which has been blamed for global vendor consolidation, is continuing to ruffle feathers in the 3G infrastructure market. Industry heavyweight Telecom Italia awarded Huawei a high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) contract this week, following an expansion contract last month from Vodafone in Spain and another deal yesterday with Leap Wireless here in the U.S. for EV-DO equipment, continuing a relationship the two companies started nearly a year ago.
Huawei is known for its price-cutting rampage across the globe. Analyst firm Dresdner Kleinwort summed it up best: "Telecom Italia Mobile is the latest to succumb to Huawei's price-product combo...much to the likely chagrin of incumbent suppliers and Ericsson AB."
The wildcard, however, remains the U.S. market. The U.S. market, primarily the CDMA market, has been a tough one to crack for outsiders in the past as operators like Verizon have tight relationships with vendors like Alcatel Lucent and Nortel. But operators naturally would like to see a drop in prices stemming from competition.
For more about Huawei's inroads:
- check out this article from Unstrung
- read this release from Huawei