By Chris Chang, posted Jun 9, 2011 at 5:28 PM, 879 views,

Huawei Unveils New Handsets in India

Chinese telecom giant Huawei has launched 3 new handsets for the Indian market and all the handsets are powered by Android operating system. Since India is Huawei’s most important overseas market in Asia, the company is aiming to grab 15% of the Indian handset market by 2015. Well, these new smartphones will allow Huawei to move a big step forward. Check out the phones after the break.

First, the IDEOS X5. X5 was first introduced by Huawei at CES during January, and the phone looks sexy with an 11.4mm-thin body. It runs Android 2.2, has a 5 megapixel camera like iPhone 4, and features a microSD card slot. It is priced at Rs 14,999 ($336) and the phone is aimed at business professionals.

Next, the IDEOS X2. We can call it as a cheaper version of X5. It runs Android 2.2 too, but only sports a 3.2 megapixel camera, and a 3.2 inch HVGA capacitive touch screen, which is smaller than the 3.8 inch screen on the X5. The best feature? Real affordable price. For just Rs 8,999 ($200), it sure catches the attention of cheapos.

Finally, the IDEOS Chat. This one is interesting. It has a touch screen, and at the same time, a QWERTY keyboard. It has dedicated keys for smileys, Google search and email (with ‘@’ sign). It also comes with preloaded social apps like Facebook and Twitter. The price? Rs 8,199 ($184).

All three smartphones would be available for sale across 10 cities in India, starting from June 13. And Huawei Devices Marketing Director said in a statement at the event of announcing these new smartphones in India,

“It is an opportune time for us to launch our new and exciting range of IDEOS smartphones whether its the X5, X2 or the Chat. We will continue to bring the latest, smartest and most technologically advanced handsets for our consumers at accessible prices.”

Huawei has been selling set-top-boxes, data dongles and CDMA handsets in India, and the company is slowly changing its focus to the GSM space and plans to sell 300,000 to 400,000 GSM handsets this year. It will invest 5-6% of its Indian revenues coming from selling devices into augmenting distribution channels and retail point of sales. What’s more, having cornered a 30% share in the business-to-business CDMA handset space over many years in India, the company now intends to take 5-7% of the GSM market by selling high-end handsets or smart-phones directly to consumers. The good news we are hearing now is that the company earned $ 490 million from Indian device revenues last financial year.

In order to grab 15% of the Indian handset market by 2015, the company has already announced plans to invest USD 2 billion in India over a period of five years. The company has already spend around USD 200 million on a research and development centre in Bangalore.

Other than smartphones, Huawei also plans to launch its tablet, S7, in India between July and September which will compete with Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Apple’s iPad and tablets from other Chinese manufacturers such as Malata, ZTE and Lenovo. And one more thing, Huawei is preparing to introduce its forthcoming MediaPad tablet, the company’s “smartest” and smallest tablet. We are looking forward to its official announcement on June 20.

Source: The Mobile Indian, The Economic Times