Huawei sees 'unprecedented global sales' of flagship P9, P9 Plus

Huawei said it has seen "unprecedented global sales" for its P9 and P9 Plus handsets, shipping 2.6 million of the phones within the first six weeks of availability as its share of the worldwide smartphone market rose to 8.5 percent. But whether the Chinese firm can ever effectively tap the U.S. market is still far from clear.

ZDNet reported that sales of Huawei's new flagship device are already 130 percent higher than those of its predecessor. The phone is selling particularly well in European markets including France, the U.K., Finland and Poland.

Huawei released the P9 in April as it continued to attack the high end of the smartphone market. While many Chinese smartphone vendors have struggled as the worldwide market slows, Huawei's daring strategy of marketing more expensive devices has paid dividends. The company posted a 33 percent increase in net profit last year due in part to its handset sales, and it recently emerged as the world's third-largest smartphone vendor behind Samsung and Apple.

The firm shipped a record 100 million smartphones last year, and IDC estimates pegged Huawei's share of the worldwide smartphone market at 8.2 percent, behind only Apple and first-place Samsung. Richard Yu, who oversees Huawei's consumer electronics business, told The Wall Street Journal that the company hopes to become the top "smart-device supplier in the world" within the next several years.

Huawei executive Maurice D'Souza told FierceWireless recently that the company saw its sales to U.S. carriers grow 10 percent to 15 percent last year, but its American customers remain small players such as Union Wireless, United Wireless and Pioneer Telecom. The company maintains it has no plans to introduce its handsets to the U.S. in any meaningful way, but if it could somehow score an American carrier partner, it could close the gap with its bigger rivals in a big way.

For more:
- read this ZDNet report

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