China’s Huawei has rejigged the top management of its India Consumer Business Group, or smartphone business, by replacing Peter Zhai with Peng Chao, who has taken over as the new chief executive, people familiar with the matter said. Zhai has moved back to China.
Under the new structure, P Sanjeev, vice president-sales at Huawei India- Consumer Business Group is now working on building an online presence for the brand, while Allen Wang, director, product centre at Huawei India- Consumer Business is focusing on building the offline retail channel.
The move underlines Huawei’s attempts at increasing its presence in India’s highly competitive handset market, where it hasn’t been able to make much of a dent so far despite entering the market before other Chinese players like Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo who are now among the top five smartphone players.
The company, which is among the top smartphone players in the world, is now aiming to become a top three smartphone player in the coming years through its offline-to-online strategy.
Huawei didn’t respond to ET’s queries.
Huawei’s Honor brand though recently saw some success in the smartphone market with 146% growth in the first quarter of 2018, and has acquired 3.4% share, up from 1.4% in the first quarter of 2017 on the back of strong performance of Honor 9 Lite and Honor 7X across online channels, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research.
The company will continue to focus on both online and offline channels. “For a brand to go up to the top three brands, one can’t ignore the offline channel,” Sanjeev recently told ET.
Huawei has also started local printed circuit board, or PCB, assembly by setting up its SMT (surface-mount technology) line in partnership with its contract manufacturing partner, Flex, in Sriperumbudur near Chennai. The company has also expanded the capacity to support the growth in the country.
It recently launched its first sub-Rs 10,000 smartphones to drive growth in the country, and to take on the likes of Xiaomi, Samsung, Oppo and Vivo.
Source: Economic Times