Communications vendor, Huawei, plans to embark on an aggressive marketing campaign in a bid to become a household name in the consumer space in the next five years.
It entered the consumer market last year with the release of Huawei branded mobile phones, tablets and mobile broadband devices.
“Current brand awareness is – no surprise at all – quite low because of our strong original equipment manufacturing (OEM) heritage,” Huawei head of devices marketing, Mark Treadwell, said. “We will be looking to push brand awareness.”
The company has been supplying OEM mobile broadband devices to telcos for a number of years, including Optus.
This will be the long term strategy which involves selling entry and mid-level devices, he said.
“It’s more a five-year strategy of becoming a household name in Australia.”
Huawei will release a swathe of new devices including three new Google Android OS based mobile phones.
Mobile phones has been named one of the company’s biggest growth areas.
The vendor will use above-the-line marketing techniques, that is, advertising through mass media. It will also team up with its major telco partners to do so.
The Huawei IDEOS X5 was launched in Australia in March exclusively to Dick Smith and Crazy Johns retail outlets in March for $349 outright. It also released the IDEOS U8150 for $159 last year.
The affordability of the mobile devices is a great sell-point and the vendor wants to continue down that route.
Huawei IDEOS X1, a lightweight 2.8-inch touchscreen phone running on Android 2.2, will be out in the second half of the year. It is tipped to sell at the low $100 mark on prepaid.
IDEOS X3 is expected to be out in July retailing for less than $200. It runs Android 2.3 and has a 3.2-inch screen.
Huawei’s third phone, called Sonic in the interim, will be priced at the low $200 mark and will be exclusive to Dick Smith, Woolworths and Big W when it is launched in the third quarter of 2011.
The vendor will be expanding its tablet range in the coming months. It is also continuing work on pocket Wi-Fi devices which will have DLNA features and SSID capabilities.
Last year, Huawei's devices segment grew 11 per cent.
This morning, Huawei announced it will be establishing a board of directors in Australia to drive the company’s local business strategies.
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