Huawei’s smartphone business has seen massive growth in South Africa over the past year.
Speaking at Huawei’s Consumer Business Group briefing in Johannesburg, Huawei CBG general manager Zhao Likun said the company’s smartphone market share has increased to 16.3% in South Africa.
Likun said Huawei’s share of the local premium device market has also shown strong growth, rising from 7% at the beginning of 2017 to 13.8% at the end of the year.
The company’s brand awareness remains strong at 83%, and the brand consideration for Huawei has almost doubled over the past year.
Huawei brand consideration in South Africa increased from 13% in 2016 to 25% in 2017.
Globally, Huawei Consumer Business Group revenue for 2017 was $36 billion – and it is the only Chinese smartphone manufacturer to ship over 100 million devices.
Huawei shipped a total of 153 million smartphones during 2017, said Likun.
Innovation and expansion
Moving forward, Likun said Huawei will construct its own local warehouse in South Africa – which should shorten device delivery times from 21 days to three days.
He added that South Africa is a key market for Huawei and the company plans to expand it product portfolio, with a focus on middle and low-end devices.
Huawei said it aims to continue innovating and improving its products in markets across the world, too, with a focus on emerging technologies such as 5G.
Likun predicted that Huawei would launch its first 5G smartphones in 2019, and the company has already launched a chipset which is compatible with 5G networks.
He also estimated that certain countries would start deploying 5G networks in 2019.
22 Mar 2018
