Huawei Eyes 100 Percent Growth in Sales

HUAWEI Zimbabwe is targeting to double monthly sales volumes for mobile phones to 25 000 units by end of this year, as its market share continues to grow, a senior official said. 

Country sales manager Robert Gonye said in an interview last week that Huawei has been building distribution networks and infrastructure since coming on the market in 2012.With the foundation and other supporting infrastructure now firmly in place, Mr Gonye said, Huawei has its sights on increasing unit sales to 25 000 per month by end of the third quarter.

"The current state of affairs is that we are doing almost half of that, which is a good, but we feel that there still is growth and serious appetite because you find that the majority of phones being purchased in Zimbabwe are feature phones," he said.

As such, Huawei Zimbabwe is looking to tap into this market and increase the uptake of smart phones to realise growth in this area.

Huawei Eyes 100 Percent Growth in Sales

Mr Gonye was speaking at the launch of Huawei's latest smart phone, the P9, which has a number of all new cutting edge features and should be available locally in the next fortnight.

The influence of the Huawei brand has grown significantly for the world's third fast growing mobile phone maker, hence its expanding footprint in Zimbabwe by network and sales.

"In Zimbabwe, we are making serious in roads, we have got a distribution network of well over 300 stores, which work directly or indirectly with us, we have also partnered major networks in Zimbabwe and have our devices available on credit," he said.

In the medium term, Mr Gonye said, plans are underway to increase in-house branded stores from 16 to 25 by October and Huawei is targeting more than 40 branded stores by year end.

Further, it wants its reach in terms of network coverage to grow from the current 264 outlets to over 400 stores by December.

The key accounts will entail Topics, Edgars, Truworths and OK-Mart, the retail outlets through which Huawei distributes it devices.
He said that after the initial work to build network, infrastructure and development as avenues for its entry, focus is now on bringing the value and benefit of mobile technology.

"The next thing is to take technology to the next level because a lot of African countries had been marginalized in them realizing or harnessing the best in what technology has to offer.

"So we partnered with TelOne and NetOne in rolling out mobile broadband, which has seen immense development in Zimbabwe in as far as communication is concerned," Mr Gonye said.

In the partnership with the telecommunications companies, Huawei said it also provided the platform on which the communication for individuals or corporate entities could happen.

The Huawei P9 is the first mobile phone to have two cameras; one which is black and white and the other one colour.

The device synchronizes the strength of the two different features to bring the best in quality for any pictures taken.

Mr Gonye said the P9 is 12 mega pixel phone in a league of its own, with unique features never seen anywhere in the world.

The mobile device combines its unrivalled features with the latest android platform and Huawei cloud system; a new integrated platform that gives one the ability to track their device by logging into their account once they cannot locate it.

Further, the P9 comes with the third generation fingerprint unlocking feature, which restricts access to personal file or which can be customised for access to personal files by guest users.