Chinese smartphone brand Huawei has re-entered the premium and super-premium smartphone segments in India, through the eponymous mother brand. Two years back, in 2016, P9 was the last smartphone that the company had launched here under the ‘Huawei’ brand.

According to P Sanjeev, Vice-President, Sales, Huawei Consumer Business Group, for the last two years the company had been focussing on its online-only brand, Honor. And hence, no new devices were introduced under ‘Huawei’ brand since then.

However, 2018 has seen a clear shift in its strategy for the Indian market. The company last week announced the launch of its premium flagship devices , P20 Pro for ₹64,999; and P20 Lite for ₹ 19,999 in India.

“We are focussing on the high-end segment and in no way will Huawei compete with Honor. We are looking at competing with Apple and Samsung,” he told BusinessLine .

“There have been queries about the Huawei brand in India and so we thought was the right time to introduce our top-notch models in the country,” Sanjeev added.

While Huawei is placed at number three globally (after Samsung and Apple), in India, its online only sub-brand Honor was amongst the top five smartphone brands in India in Q1 of 2018.

According to him, Huawei would obviously be “showing its might” and will introduce new models across premium and super-premium price points. “We are looking at a couple of more launches in the next few months,” Sanjeev said.

The company will look at both online and offline presence — through Amazon and retail stores. According to numbers released by research firm International Data Corporation as a part of the Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, 334.3 million smartphones shipped globally in Q1 2018 (January–March), as compared with 344.4 million units in the same period last year. This is a decline of nearly 3 per cent. Apart from slowdown in China, the decline in shipments is also because of people holding on to the phones they own, for longer; particularly the expensive flagship ones.

Space at the top

In India, while the big fight is in the mid-to-mid-premium ranges, the high-end one is all about Apple and Samsung. At the premium end, OnePlus (apart from Samsung) has made a mark.

The premium and super-premium segments are not volume-driven and barely account for less than 10 per cent of the market. In fact, compared to mid-premium ranges, brand loyalty is higher in the premium and super-premium segments.

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