SAO PAULO - China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd is making a second attempt at cracking the Brazilian smartphone market, the fourth-largest in the world, with the launch of two high-end handsets this month, after its cheaper offerings failed to catch on earlier in the decade.
“Brazil is a market with very significant opportunities for Huawei and we have a competitive portfolio to satisfy consumers’ expectations,” said Ketrina Dunagan, Huawei’s vice president of marketing for the Americas, in a statement emailed to Reuters. Huawei, the world’s third largest smartphone manufacturer, first launched a smartphone in Brazil in 2014, but the Ascend P7 handset met with weak demand and the project was discontinued.
Whereas five years ago, Huawei set up as a supplier to mobile carriers, which sell just a tenth of new smartphones in Brazil, this time the company is looking to partner with retail chains that sell more than two-thirds of handsets, the source said.