Huawei Turns Its Sights To India
Chinese mobile titan signs deal to start making and selling smartphones on the subcontinent
Huawei has made another significant step on its path to world domination with the announcement of its first major deal in one of the world’s fastest-growing mobile device markets.
The Chinese company has revealed it now has security clearance from India’s Ministry of Home Affairs to manufacture telecoms equipment in India, making it the first major Chinese brand to supply locally made products for one of the world’s biggest markets.
“India is an important overseas market for Huawei,” Allen Wang, president of Huawei’s consumer business group in India, told Reuters. “We aim to become a top three brand in India within three years.”
Home-made
Under the deal, which had been under discussion for around 19 months, Huawei will build and sell its own handsets in India as it looks to add to the estimated 150m devices already in the country.
The company has already established research and development operations in Bangalore (pictured), and also has an export manufacturing plant in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
It also currently sells its Honor smartphones in India, with the 4C, 4X and 6+ all available to buy.
India has proved a popular market for low-cost mobile devices, as several major manufacturers all make a play for what should prove to be a key battleground.
This includes Google, which launched its first Android One smartphones in the country last September, using local components and brands to try and get its devices to as many consumers as possible, and Mozilla, which launched a £20 mobile device based on its Firefox OS in India last August.
Several other companies are also expanding their infrastructure onto the subcontinent, most recently Amazon, which last month revealed plans to open data centres for its Amazon Web Services product in India.
Microsoft also revealed plans earlier this year to build data centres in India, offering its cloud platform Azure and Office 365, and IBM has also made an entry into the Indian market with its hybrid cloud platform.
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