Micromax deal shows Huawei is now seriously looking at India to become world’s largest smartphone company post US ban 

Huawei has joined hands with Micromax to “expand its customer portfolio and presence in offline market in India.” While terms, conditions as well as financial details of new agreement remain scarce as of moment, tie-up will essentially entail Micromax using its offline sales network to distribute Huawei products “in urban as well as rural regions of country.” We’re looking at a phased expansion, with Huawei and Micromax kicking off proceedings from cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kochi, Bangalore, Hyderab, Ahmedab, Dehrun, Kolkata and Jaipur. Both parties have confirmed it’s going to be a ‘long-term’ association, and eventually more cities will be ded to list. 

“With an aim to be present where our consumers are, we plan to focus on a robust offline distribution network catering to needs of consumers in urban as well as rural regions of country and to make m experience invative techlogy that has won hearts of customers’ world over,” Torno Pan who is India He, Huawei Consumer Business Group, said in a statement.  

Just to be clear, Huawei alrey sells its products via brick and mortar stores in India – through Croma and Poorvika - even though it did start its India journey by being online-only. Huawei’s renewed – and potentially its biggest - push for India’s offline market share comes at a testing time for Chinese major. Huawei has been put into an ‘entity list’ by Trump ministration which bars all US companies from doing any sort of business with company. While re are a lot of technicalities involved, two key repercussions of ban include – a) Huawei’s HiSilicon subsidiary can’t use ARM blueprints to make future mobile processors, b) Huawei can’t access Google’s Android in all its totality. 

recently concluded G20 summit raised hope that China and US are in-sync to find some sort of middle ground – summit also ended on a positive te with President Trump giving a ‘verbal’ go-ahe to US companies to start selling products to Huawei – but Huawei still isn’t off ‘entity list’ which means US companies will still require some sort of approval from Trump ministration before selling ir components to company.  

Short version – future of all Huawei smartphones is uncertain, even though company has reiterated time and again that it has (and will always have) its customers’ back.  

And in midst of it all, Huawei has some big ambitions. Huawei is currently world’s third largest smartphone company and it is inching closer to Apple – Huawei is also said to have usurped Apple briefly to become world’s second largest smartphone company according to data released by a few research firms. Huawei expects to better both Apple and Samsung (using combined strength of Huawei+Hor) by 2020 – and while state of affairs may t exactly seem to be in its favour,  Micromax deal shows Huawei is w seriously looking at India - world's second largest smartphone market - to become  world’s largest smartphone company post  US ban. 

Huawei has been active in India a lot lately – it has been launching its new flagships here soon after anuncing m elsewhere. P30 Pro is a classic example.  

While its offline expansion plans may also have a lot to do with recent changes in India’s e-commerce policy, grabbing more market share is without a doubt catalyst - offline retail still dominates India’s market share by a fair margin, suggesting that’s where chunk of buyers are. And because, “brand has been witnessing overwhelming response from all section of consumers,” it was about time Huawei looked at raising stakes.  

As for Micromax, “we are pleased to partner with Huawei telecommunications, with this long-term partnership we aim to reinforce our commitment towards consumers in India. Toger, we aim to move a step closer in solving consumer needs with invative offerings. ditionally, we are looking at boosting our services and strengning our association with our existing and potential customers,” Sunil Joon who is he, Strategy for Micromax Informatics said. Micromax will be free to build and sell its own products, like it used to.  

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