Huawei Could Well Leapfrog Samsung And Stake A Top-Of-Android Coup

Call it a coup or a takeover, fact is Huawei is looking to upstage Samsung. Soon.

Wearables may’ve dearly wanted this crown, as would have tablets, but if humankind was to choose one product that they just couldn’t live without, it just has to be smartphones.

Smartphones have been the torch of progress for humankind for almost all of the last decade.

And where there’s a flame, there’s attention.

Drexel Hamilton, an American analyst firm has stated that Huawei would almost certainly beat Samsung to become Apple’s main competitor in the coming years:
“I do expect the Chinese to knock off Samsung and that’s probably going to be Huawei,” he said. “I see it as a Huawei-Apple fight in the future, Samsung and probably some smaller competitors underneath them”.

It’s not surprising in the least too. Huawei’s been nipping at Samsung’s heels for a while now — entering every market that Samsung’s at, spending as much money on promotions as Samsung does, and in fact, releasing as many models as it can, to counter every tech innovation in the industry.

All these efforts, however, have strained Huawei.

Huawei is a major player in its home country China, where its only real competition is Oppo. And there, both the brands fight tooth and nail for the customer wallet.

China aside, Huawei has been working to make a niche in the burgeoning Indian smartphone market too. Their goal is to reinforce their business base and increase efficiency in their consumer services and operations. They are focusing on Indian consumers and trying their best to meet all of our diverse needs, and divergent price points.

Trying to honor the ‘Make in India’ policy of the Indian government, Huawei has set up a manufacturing branch in Chennai.

But these expansion efforts aren’t entirely risk-free, and they do cost the company, significantly. Its network equipment business is already at a low, and make be a casualty for a while.
Huawei, like other phone companies are now making preparations to accommodate the faster speeds of 5G in their devices, so they’ve begun to pull back their network rollouts.

So the question that comes to mind now is whether all their investment will ultimately bear fruit. It does seem at the moment like it could either make or break the company.

Huawei aspires to be the world’s biggest smartphone company in the coming six years. With their unique rotating-CEO mechanism, we can only imagine how much innovation is on its way to the market.

It would definitely be interesting to see how they impress their customers in a world where the smartphone market has become almost completely homogenous, and could well flat-line in the next 5–6 years.

That said, if there’s one company that could challenge Samsung to take second-from-top spot — it’s got to be Huawei. Xiaomi’s out from the pull till such time that they enter developed markets like the U.S., which they can’t do till they sort out their patent vulnerabilities.

Huawei’s sure to be seeing that as happenstance, and make the most of it over the next 24 months or so.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.