China's Huawei is catching up in India, slowly

Aims to break into the top 10 list in India within a year

Chinese maker Huawei, among the top three smartphone makers in the world, is trying to break into the top 10 list of players in India within a year, according to analysts.

Six months ago Huawei launched a new brand Honor to break away from its telecommunications and networking heritage, experts said.

The Honor range of phones are priced at under Rs 15,000 and Huawei is eying a 10 per cent share of this segment that constitutes two-thirds of the smartphone market in India. Huawei also launched six upgrades in the last six months to keep up the momentum in a market where most players launch a handset a month.

Analysts said Honor had helped Huawei make inroads. While it was not in the top 20 list of smartphone players in India at the beginning of the year, it now hovers between 15 and 17. The company did not reply to an e-mail sent to it.

The Indian smartphone market is nearly 40 per cent of the 53-55 million handset market, according to the International Data Corporation. India is now at the same point that the Chinese smartphone market was in 2013.

Huawei's share has grown to one per cent of the smartphone market in India from 0.3 per cent earlier, according to CyberMedia Research.

"Companies like Huawei, Ericsson and Alcatel have realised they can no longer ignore this vertical. Huawei is working in right earnest to improve market share," said Faisal Khwoosa, lead analyst, telecom, CyberMedia Research.

P Sanjeev, director, sales (device business), Huawei Telecommunications, had earlier said the company would step up its presence in multi-brand outlets, targeting 1,000 stores in the top cities.

The company's target was to break into the top 10 in a year, analysts said. Samsung has a 23 per cent share of the smartphone market, followed by Micromax (17 per cent), Intex (11 per cent), Lava (seven per cent) and Lenovo (six per cent), according to IDC.

According to CMR, the numbers are even sharper, with Samsung, Micromax and Intex having shares of 26 per cent, 15 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively.