Huawei stakes claim on smartphone speed crown

LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012:Huawei has unveiled its Ascend D series smartphones, its new premium handset line designed to secure it top spot in the speed race, as it set aggressive sales targets for the 2012 calendar year.
The company announced two devices with quad-core processors, the Ascend D quad and D quad XL, which include 1.2GHz and 1.5GHz chips. They are powered by a Huawei-made application processor, which also includes advanced graphics processing capabilities.
At the company’s launch event, Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei Device, said its quadcore smartphones significantly outperformed a quadcore tablet that is already available, which is significant because it is powered by the same Nvidia processor which is now making its way into the smartphone space.
Yu revealed that the company is looking to ship 60 million smartphones in 2012, up from 20 million in 2011. Much of the volume (30 percent – 40 percent) will come from the Chinese market, where customers are shifting to smartphones from feature phones, aided by aggressive operator subsidies.
The executive said that having previously built its position with low-cost devices, Huawei sees technology leadership as important for the future. “We want the best performance in the industry, because our brand is not that famous,” he said.
Yu said the company is already in talks with tier-one operators about D quad availability, and that pricing will be “competitive” when compared to similar products from rivals. Global availability is scheduled in the second quarter of 2012.
Yu closed the event by revealing that Huawei is readying a tablet device with full HD resolution and quad-core processor, which will be “not lower than the iPad 3.” This device will also include LTE connectivity.