Tossaporn Nisthanon, deputy country director of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said the Chinese company had officially announced two new flagship smartphones, the Huawei P9 and P9 Plus, for the Thai market, priced at Bt16,990 and Bt21,990 respectively. The company will spend around Bt150 million for marketing to promote the new products.

The Huawei P9 features a dual-lens camera, while the P9 Plus boasts an immaculate 5.5-inch display within a metal uni-body. The two models were launched for the global market in London in April.

The company has also introduced the “Diamond” service for the two phones. Should a phone require repair work taking longer than 60 minutes, Huawei will provide a new device to customers.

There are now five service centres in Thailand providing Diamond service: the Synnex head office in Lat Phrao, SVOA head office in Rat Burana, CSC head office in Lumpini, and the Huawei Service Centres in Nakhon Si Thammarat and Chiang Mai.

Tossaporn said Huawei was negotiating with modern-trade outlets and camera shops to retail its phones. It expects to get its products into such outlets by next quarter.

Thomas Liu, president for Southeast Asia of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said the company now had online marketing channels in Europe, Russia and China. It expects to have online channels in Thailand in the next step.

The Chinese company says it will also continue to invest in Thailand and will officially introduce a new Thai executive to take care of this market.

Globally, the company reported revenue growth of 8.5 per cent in the first quarter.

Thomas Liu, president for Southeast Asia of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said the company aimed for a 15-per-cent share of Thailand’s smartphone market in 2017, from just 2 per cent last year.

Year on year, Huawei’s share of the global smartphone market increased by 62 per cent in the first quarter.

“We will continue [to] invest in Thailand in terms of marketing and business channels and will officially announce an online channel for Huawei P9 and P9 Plus as well as [promote] Tossaporn Nisthanon to Huawei county director to take care [of the] Thai market next week,” Liu said.

He said the company entered the Thai market five years ago and had grown ever since.

Huawei has invested around US$600 million (more than Bt21 billion) in Thailand during the five year it has been doing business here.

It says it will be the first brand in Thailand to offer countrywide delivery of its products within just five days of purchase.

The Huawei P9 is a dual-lens-camera smartphone. The Huawei P9 Plus features a 5.5-inch display within a metal uni-body. The two new smartphones were launched in the global market in April and will available in Thailand next week.

In the pipeline for the Thai market are the Huawei Watch and Huawei MateBook.

“Huawei has strategic plans to accelerate the growth of the smartphone business in Southeast Asia,” Liu said.

He said the company had invested around $37 billion in research and development, 10 per cent of it global annual revenue, over the past 10 years.

“We will focus on developing cutting-edge technology to deliver a [better] user experience to customers worldwide through smartphones packed with a number of innovations.”

International Data Corporation has presented an updated five-year forecast for smartphone shipments worldwide by device vendors. IDC says 1.5 billion smartphones will be shipped this year, up 5.7 per cent from the 1.4 billion units shipped in 2015.

From there, shipments will reach 1.92 billion units in 2020, the final year of the forecast period, resulting in a compound annual growth rate of 6.0 per cent.

Phone makers face another tough year in 2016 as subdued global growth and persisting currency weakness in key emerging markets sap consumers’ spending power. A push by Chinese manufacturers to expand overseas amid slowing growth in their domestic market may also undercut margins further.

In a bid to recapture market share, Samsung launched two new versions of its Galaxy S smartphone and brought in Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg for a surprise appearance to tout the potential of virtual reality, prompting hundreds of people to rush to the stage to record the moment.

LG, which lost money from its mobile business last year asits flagship products struggled, introduced a modular design to its new G5 smartphones that allows users to replace or upgrade functions such as camera and audio independently.

It also launched a virtual reality headset and accessories including a drone controller to pair with the G5.

Analysts and investors cheered LG’s features, which they said were different enough to possibly revive sales, but were lukewarm about Samsung’s offerings, saying they only featured incremental upgrades.

“I think it’s possible for LG’s mobile business to recover on its new product launch, since they delivered significant changes with the G5,” said Seoul-based HDC Asset Management fund manager Park Jung-hoon.

“The Galaxy S7, however, doesn’t seem to be creating as much buzz,” Park said.

Samsung shares were down 1.3 percent as of 0212 GMT, underperforming a 0.2 percent fall for the broader market, while LG shares were up 3 percent.

Revamps could prove key to smartphone makers as 2016 shapes up to be another tough year: researcher Trend Force expects the smartphone market growth to slow to 8.1 percent from 10.3percent a year earlier.

Margin pressures are also expected to intensify for the industry as Chinese manufacturers seek to expand overseas to counter slowing domestic demand.

Samsung on Saturday said its mobile payments service, Samsung Pay, will launch in China in March, a month after Apple launched its Apple Pay service in the world’s biggest smartphone market.

The company fell out of the top five in the world’s top smartphone market last year but hopes that its easy-to-use payments service will help it regain sales momentum.

“The challenge you have got in the smartphone market isbreaking through all that sameness. From a design and functionality perspective, everything looks and feels the same,” said Bob O’Donnell, president of Technalysis Research.

– Reuters