Huawei aims to overtake Samsung as the biggest phone maker in 2020

Huawei aims to be the top phone maker in 2020. Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer division, revealed the company's goal in an exclusive interview with CNBC. 

"Next year, we will be very close to number one, maybe we will be on par with Samsung. And at least the year after, maybe we have a chance (to be number one), the year 2020," Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei's consumer division, told CNBC in an exclusive interview.

However, overtaking Samsung is not an easy task. Counterpoint research director Neil Shah estimates that Huawei needs to ship about 30 million to 40 million more phones per quarter to beat Samsung. Shah also said that Huawei has to conquer markets where Samsung is traditionally strong at, which are the U.S, Europe and India. Moreover, Samsung recently revamped its strategy by bringing more innovative features to its mid and low-range devices to defend its market share from Huawei and other Chinese phone brands.

Nonetheless, Yu Yu encourages his staff to take risks and challenge themselves to do better than the competition. He also believes AI will help fuel further growth for Huawei in the future.

"AI is coming. AI will be the engine for all the future services. AI will be elementary to working on many devices, it will connect all the apps, you can get all the services from this AI capability. The biggest changes in the next 10 years will be AI-enabled phones capability," Yu told CNBC.

To stay ahead of the competition, Yu said that the company will push into new consumer products which include a foldable phone next year and AR glasses in the next one to two years. Huawei will also continue to invest in speakers, wearable devices, cloud storage music streaming and video content so that it will be seen as the whole solution smart life provider in the next 10 years. 

Source: CNBC

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