The Financial Times is reporting that Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei would consider buying Nokia to boost its global market share.
The FT quotes Huawei's Business Group Chairman Richard Yu:
“We are considering these sorts of acquisitions; maybe the combination has some synergies but depends on the willingness of Nokia. We are open-minded.”Huawei is the world's third largest smartphone manufacturer by volume, after Samsung and Apple, with the majority of its sales in China.
And it's now trying to increase trade in the rest of the world. Mr Yu was speaking at the launch of the company's latest device in London: the Huawei Ascend P6 running Android OS, billed as the world's thinnest smartphone. The company has dipped its toes in the Windows Phone operating system with one device running on the OS and speculation of another about to be released.
Mr Yu predicted that the smartphone market would consolidate to about three or four companies – and warned that Microsoft’s Windows phone platform used by Nokia as well as Huawei was “weak”. Huawei has mostly adopted Google’s Android operating system for its smartphones.
“Whether Windows Phone [will be] successful is difficult to say – it has a very small market share. [Windows Phones] are weak but still require a licence fee. That’s not good. Android is free.
Even without acquisitions, Huawei has become the third-largest manufacturer of smartphones by volume behind Samsung and Apple, and Mr Yu said that the company aimed to beat internal sales targets of 55-60m smartphones this year. The pace of growth is such that Mr Yu complained about a shortage of component supplies, which has slowed down manufacturing.
(Source: Financial Times)“Twenty years ago, we were nothing but now we have the best quality [phones] and our customers say we are the best,” he said. “We want to shorten the gap with competitors. We want to lead.”
Update: Nokia shares spiked 11% following the Financial Times story, but dropped back.
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