Huawei eyes $3billion Middle East revenues on infrastructure demand

Huawei Technologies Co., the Chinese maker of telecommunication equipment, is targeting about $3 billion in revenues from the Middle East this year, or 10% of the group's overall revenue goal, as it continues to tap into the region's demand for infrastructure hardware, a company executive said.

"We are implementing fiber to the home in Qatar for Qtel, around 150,000 homes," Tony Wong, chief technology officer for the Middle East told Zawya Dow Jones in an interview Tuesday.

"Saudi Arabia in the meantime is one of the largest contributors to Huawei in the Middle East. They (Saudi) have about 25 million people and also have very high GDP (gross domestic product)." In 2010, income from Huawei's business in the Middle East reached about $2.75 billion, said Wong.

Huawei is best known as a maker of telecommunications hardware but is also expanding its business selling devices such as mobile phones, tablets and wireless modems. The Chinese firm currently has a vendor partnership agreement in place with the U.A.E.'s Etisalat as well as other pacts with Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co., or Du, as well as Egypt's Vodafone and Egyptian Co. For Mobile Services, or Mobinil.

Huawei is implementing fiber-to-home which will replace traditional cooper wires and allow for internet protocol television, or IPTV, in locations such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said Wong.

"Five years down the road consumer product or enterprise solutions will be as big as infrastructure equipment," said Wong."Today we are selling to the operators. We have not done too much business to the non-operators: the companies, governments, and banks.

We want to penetrate into different segments," he added. Enterprise solutions will include such things as developing networks for government security, police, and railway, according to Wong.

"Once we move to the enterprise we have to do some advertising and promotion about the company's image...we need to build our own consumer brand name," he added. Huawei has been manufacturing affordable smartphones since 2010, but the Chinese manufacturer doesn't market smartphones under its own name.

"Vodafone the number one customer for Huawei outside China puts their name on the smartphones and the consumer trusts Vodafone," said Wong."If we come with a new name, we will have to do a lot of promotion and spending a lot of money," he added name, we will have to do a lot of promotion and spending a lot of money," he added.

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