Huawei’s Android smartphones for India soon

Two Android smartphones – U8300 and U8500 – and two Hangout feature-phones from Huawei

Huawei, the Chinese handset company announced that it will soon sell four new handsets in India. These handsets are to be available from August 1, 2010. The Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer is stregthening its product line-up in India. The company announced the upcoming launch of its Android tablet in India, the Huawei Smakit S7, a couple of days back.

Huawei produces low cost devices that are loaded with features. And although the specifications of these four phones have not been precisely revealed so far, we do have an idea of what Huawei will offer:

Huawei’s Android smartphones

Of these four mobile phones that Huawei will produce, two run on Google’s mobile operating system Android. These are the U8300 and U8500, which will probably cost above Rs 10,000 and will be 3G-enabled. Further, since these handsets run on Android, users will have access to about 70,000 mobile applications that are available from Google’s Android Market website.

Huawei U8300

Huawei’s U8300 has a Qualcomm chipset. It has a touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard. It is said to be targeted at the youth and is loaded with social networking programs such as Facebook and Twitter and also has a 3.2 mega pixel camera. Being 3G internet enabled, the phone will also support multiple email clients.

Huawei U8500

The Huawei U8500 is probably a higher priced – and powered by more powerful hardware – phone than the U8300 and is targeted at professionals. It has a touchscreen and allows high speed download through WiFi. It also enables the user to access multiple email clients and has a camera that can be used for video calling via 3G broadband.

Huawei Hangout

Huawei’s Hangout series is expected to cost less than the company’s Android smartphones. They will run on GSM, CDMA and UMTS technologies and will probably be broadband- enabled as well.

These phones will not have advantages of the Android based phones though, and will not run Google Market applications.

Huawei in India

Huawei has sold more than half a crore devices in India last year, and has sold a total of 2.5 crore wireless devices here so far, and of these 60% have been mobile handsets.

Huawei’s devices were until now bought by mobile operators such as Airtel, Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices and sold after bundling with their mobile or internet connections.

Due to recent regulations from the Indian government, foreign companies wishing to sell through operators need to submit the designs of their devices to government agencies for inspection.

It is possible that Huawei and other international mobile device producers will submit to these conditions as the Indian market offers a big opportunity for them. It is estimated that there are 20 million new mobile subscribers in India every month, and that by 2015 there will be 1 billion mobile users in India.

Earlier, Nokia had a 54.1% share of this market but the company’s share is falling due to intense competition from Chinese and Indian manufacturers that sell cheaper devices.

More Huawei

Huawei said it will launch a smartphone for Rs 8,000 during Diwali and will eventually release 20 smartphone models priced between Rs 7,000 and Rs. 12,000. All of these phones are to have Qualcomm chipsets. These chipsets are specially designed for 3G networks.