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Wednesday, 30 September 2015 00:16 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
By Shehana Dain
Chinese tech giant Huawei is in the process of executing a strategy to strike a sales target of Rs. 10 billion in Sri Lanka by 2016, a feat which would reflect a 120% increase from an estimated turnover of Rs. 4.2 billion in 2015.
Huawei Country Head Henry Liu told the Daily FT that even though the company had forecast a revenue target of Rs. 3.5 billion for the current financial year, they had successfully managed to exceed expectations.
During the first half of 2015, Huawei sales have risen by 300%, the company, quoting International Data Corporation (IDC) data, revealed. Huawei smartphones enjoy an 18% market share in Sri Lanka. Huawei was the third bestselling smartphone brand in the market in 2014 and this year it has so far succeeded in grabbing the second spot.
While Huawei has been prominent as an ICT solutions provider for over a decade in Sri Lanka, the company penetrated the smartphone market in 2012, collaborating with Singer Sri Lanka.
The company also revealed that the Western Province had over 50% of total sales share in Sri Lanka with the Southern (16%), Central (17%) and the Northern and East (21%) provinces emerging as the other high-performing regions.
“My aim is to make Huawei Sri Lanka’s leading smartphone brand,” Liu told the media yesterday.
“The company is also willing to bear the loss caused by the devaluation of the rupee as we will not alter the prices as such in our new models which will be launched here soon. We sold 300,000 mobile devices last year. That was way more than what we expected. I think the main reason for our success is because we invest in marketing and research aggressively. Last year we invested Rs. 282.4 million on marketing and we will continue to do more,” he added.
“One of our main strategies is to build many retail outlets so that we can expand our coverage. We are planning to set up our own service centres in the Western, North East, Central and Southern provinces in addition to Singer showrooms to provide better service to our customers. We are also planning on conducting our launches on a much bigger scale,” Liu highlighted.
Pic by Daminda Harsha