The photo is part of the mythology of Huawei. A black and white photograph showing a workshop at the facade was crumbling. We are in 1987, in Shenzhen, a former fishing port chinese became, in the early 1980s, a special economic zone.
Ren Zhengfei comes to acquire this building to found his own company, with a starting bet of just over 5 000 dollars. Thirty years later, the company generates a turnover of 75 billion dollars ($63,7 billion euros) and aspires to become nothing less than ” the world leader in communication “.
Become, away from the eyes of the general public, one of the first global suppliers in the telecommunications network, the company is entered in the light in the favour of his arrival on the smartphone market, at the beginning of the decade. “When a few years ago, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, they have proclaimed that they were going to become the number three throughout the world, the world has watched with skepticism,” recalls Thomas Husson, an analyst for Forrester.
In the court of the great
Yet it is now done, and the chinese group eyeing now openly the first step of the podium. “We can get there within three to five years,” says Walter Ji, chairman of the part of consumers for western Europe. With an 11.3% market share, Huawei close behind of course Apple (12 %), but is still far outpaced by the world number one, Samsung (23.3 per cent). In September, another firm, Counterpoint, placing even Huawei to Apple.
The company, which stuck to its debut the reputation of being an imitator, low end, plays today in the great court. Evidenced by the latest smartphone that it has presented in Munich, on October 16, the Mate 10. A product with the latest technology that comes directly compete with the high-end devices from Samsung and Apple, at a price of only 799 euros, compared to 1, 000 euros to…
