Mochou Lee
Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group said on Saturday that Huawei will surpass rival smartphone maker Xiaomi with assistance from JD.com.
At the press conference for the newly announced Strategic Cooperation between Tencent & JD, Yu claimed Huawei smartphones had topped mobile phone rankings during JD’s “6.18 Festival”. Yu added that the cooperation with JD.com will bring Huawei profit of more than RMB 10 billion (USD 1.57 billion) this year.
The press conference focused on the “JD&Tencent Plan”, the strategic cooperation between Tencent and JD. The two companies will combine their resources to promote “Brand-Commerce”, which will enable brand-name merchants to better target customers and will ultimately bring more customers to JD.com, according to Xiong Qingyun, vice president of the JD Group.
Further, Richard Yu said the cooperation with JD will bring Huawei an estimated RMB 20 billion in profit by the end of next year. Huawei’s rival Xiaomi accounted for 18% of the Chinese smartphone market for the second quarter 2015, while Huawei took up 16%, according to IHS Technology, a market research agency.
Huawei now ranks third place in the global smartphone market after Apple and Samsung. Yu expects to rank second by the end of 2017 with an eye on the top spot.
“Huawei is developing at the primary stage and will become a blockbuster in the future. The major driving force pushing Huawei ahead will be collaborating with other partners (JD and Tencent) and making profit together,” Yu said.
Right now, over 300 Huawei engineers are developing India-customized Honor handsets at Huawei’s research center in Bangalore. It was also reported at the beginning of October that the company plans to set up a product research and development center in Sriperumbudur, a town in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
A year ago, its rival Xiaomi announced its plan to establish a design base as well as an R&D center in Bangalore.
(Photo from Baidu Image)
Edited by Rohan Malhotra
Mochou Lee is a guest writer at AllChinaTech.