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Distributors
October 8, 2018
£60 million sales projection as manufacturer aims to ‘pull the UK in line’ with European markets
Westcoast has announced it is to be distributor of Huawei consumer products for the UK B2B market.
The distributor signed the indefinite agreement earlier this month and will offer all products in the Huawei consumer portfolio including mobile phones, tablets and laptops to its 5,000 B2B resellers.
Huawei senior B2B sales manager Eric Yu told Mobile News that the Chinese manufacturer is hoping the achieve £60 million in sales from the B2B channel in 2019.
He said: “Westcoast has got the reach to the major players in the B2B market and can help us meet our objectives.”
“It’s taken Huawei 10 years to get where it is now with 12 per cent market share in the retail space – which is set to mature – and we believe we are settling down.
“Therefore, it is the right time to work on different sectors so while our retail business is settling down we are kicking off our B2B business.”
Projection
On top of the sales projection, Yu revealed that Huawei is targeting 25 per cent market share in the UK and the rest of the established Western-European markets.
But he warned that the UK is behind the rest of the continent in that respect, adding that he hopes that Westcoast can pull the UK in line.
He said: “The UK, all in all, is so far behind competitive Western European markets cross the board. For example, in France we have more than 50 per cent in market share, in Germany it’s 28 per cent.
“We don’t want to lose out, and we are trying to catch up to the 20 to 25 per cent market share goal.
“Westcoast is doing a brilliant job for HP and also Lenovo, so we believe it can repeat the same story with similar products for us as well.”
Devices
Westcoast head of mobile Darren Seward said that the distributor will be focusing on the devices in the Huawei range rather than the network solutions in its portfolio.
Seward also reckoned that Huawei had a good chance to improve on its consumer success in the B2B space, adding: “When you look a Huawei, it has done a great job promoting its brand in the last 18 months.
“I think if you look at its growth, over the last six months that consumer brand recognition for Huawei has taken off.
“What we tend to see happen in the business world is, if the brand has a strong consumers offering, then, with some tweaks and additional offerings, it works well in B2B.
“In terms of Huawei, our primary focus is obviously around tablets and laptops as well as focusing on the smartphones. What we tend to see a lot more of is the SIM-only type deals with big businesses – big rollouts – so we will be trying to sell Huawei into as many of our customers as possible.”