Huawei Technologies ramps-up growth in Asia Pacific

The company announced, on the sidelines of CommunicAsia 2006 in Singapore, that its contract sales in Asia, excluding China, Japan South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, is expected to jump to more than US$2 billion this year from $1.29 billion in 2005 as it continues to focus on strengthening its relationship with existing and potential key customers in the region.

Huawei has been steadily expanding its operations outside of China since 1996 and has a presence in 13 countries across Asia Pacific, with its products deployed in over 20 countries in the region. In 2005, the company's global international sales hit US$4.8 billion, which exceeded domestic sales for the first time, accounting for 57 per cent of its total contract sales of US$8.2 billion. This trend is expected to continue as part of Huawei's internationalization strategy and Asia Pacific remains one of the most important markets as Huawei expands globally.

'With our vision to enrich people's life through communications, Huawei is committed to bringing excellent services and innovative technologies to the Asia-Pacific market,' said Mr. Liu Jianfeng, vice-president, Huawei Technologies Asia Pacific. 'Asia Pacific is one of the fastest growing regions in the world for us and we remain committed to this region through continued investments in R&D and customer-centric product development. We currently work with over 150 Asian telecom operators and believe that our broad and comprehensive portfolio of leading solutions and products provides us with a strong competitive edge.'

Huawei sees the future drivers of its business as being next-generation networks (NGN) for both fixed and wireless carriers. The company has made significant traction in this area as evidenced by its contract wins with the likes of TT&T in Thailand, TM & TIME in Malaysia, PTCL & TELIPS in Pakistan and JTB in Brunei. Huawei also won four 3G contracts in Asia Pacific, including B-Mobile in Brunei, Celecom in Malaysia, NTS in Indonesia and Econet in New Zealand. With convergence being a key development in the telecommunications industry, Huawei recognizes that operators are increasingly looking for vendors that have a comprehensive, end-to-end portfolio of products and solutions. This continues to be a key strength and unique offering that Huawei offers to carriers.

At CommunicAsia 2006, Huawei rolled out the industry's first carrier-class metro Ethernet switches that will help operators better serve their customers.

'Huawei's new Quidway CX series switches represents a next generation in convergence and access switches. Some of the key benefits of this product include delivering increased protection, greater reliability, high-level of security and easy management in addressing service requirements for next generation networks, broadband access, triple play and large account private line access over IP networks.'

said Wang Jiading, vice president, Huawei Technologies MENA region.

Huawei also introduced an integrated video and audio conferencing system solution designed specifically to enhance the business competitiveness of small and medium enterprises (SMBs). The new solutions include Huawei's high definition group video terminals ViewPoint8066 and ViewPoint8033, videophone ViewPoint8220 and ViewPoint8210, which incorporate built-in Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) functions that reduces operational costs for SMBs.

In the area of wireless terminals, Huawei launched the world's smallest HSDPA USB modem E220 and as an extension of its focus in the 3G market, is introducing two 3G handsets - UMTS dual mode handsets U528, U526 and five CDMA handsets C2285, C2205, C2281, C5300, C3300. To date, Huawei supplies 3G terminal products to customers in over 70 countries including China, Sweden, Portugal, Russia, India, Brazil, UK, Italy, Spain, France and Hong Kong.