Huawei is one of the most successful manufacturers of mobile products, not only from China but globally. Throughout the year, they have released interesting products not only focusing on powerful internals but also on great industrial designs and good build materials. The Huawei Watch took everyone by surprise for its good looks and build quality, as it includes a stainless steel chassis and sapphire glass is covering its round display. The P8 lineup features a design made with aluminum and the company focused on its cameras. The Mate S includes a pressure sensitive display and the company became the first Chinese manufacturers to build a phone for Google, the Nexus 6P. Recently, they announced the Mate 8 phablet, being a follow-up to one of their most successful devices last year.
The company has discussed how they got to be the third manufacturer with the most global smartphone shipments. Last year’s Ascend Mate 7 sold over 7 million units around the world, and they expect this year’s Huawei Mate 8 to sell over 10 million thanks to its powerful internals including the Kirin 950 processor made by Huawei’s HiSilicon, this would be the first product to surpass this number. They set a goal to ship over 100 million handsets and the company seems confident to reach those numbers, even before their scheduled timeframe. They are currently selling more smartphones in China than their rivals like Xiaomi or even Samsung. The company has registered a whopping 60.9% growth in shipments this year, while Samsung registered a 6.1% compared to last year’s shipments and Apple got a 22.2% growth. Still, both of these companies ship a lot more devices than Huawei, more than twice in the case of Apple and more than three times in the case of Samsung, so the company is looking for ways to close that gap.
The strategy relies on brand marketing and reinforcing their retail channels. They have been building a lot of retail stores, and they plan to expand them to additional regions next year, for a total of 1,000 stores while making new marketing stunts to raise awareness like rebranding products like they have been doing when they removed the Ascend name or they might even create additional branches. The company seems confident that their amount of profit on the Huawei Mate 8 would surpass the one that Samsung gets for their devices. Huawei has also been investing a lot in R&D and they are currently investigating on uses for graphene, although it doesn’t seem like it will be commercially available in a near future.