Huawei expects strong sales for new flagship phone Ascend P7

A model poses for photos with the latest mobile phone Ascend P7 from Huawei at the CommunicAsia exhibition held in Singapore's Marina Bay Sands Expo, June 17, 2014. The CommunicAsia and BroadcastAsia kicked off at the Marina Bay Sands Expo Tuesday. (Xinhua/Then Chih Wey)

China-based telecommunications giant Huawei is expecting better sales for its latest flagship smart phone Ascend P7, compared with its precursor Ascend P6, senior executives of the company said Tuesday.

"We envision that LTE (long-term evolution) will experience major growth in the coming three years as the volume of high speed networks increases, leading to a surge in mobile data traffic," said Low Han Thong, country head of Huawei Device Singapore.

The 4G LTE-enabled Ascend P7 was launched globally on May 7 at a ceremony in Paris. Executives of the company said that by June 13 it has sold over 1 million units. The company has set a target of 10 million units in 12 months, media reports said.

Huawei sold about 4 million units of the precursor Ascend P6, which was launched in June 2013. It proved especially popular in China and Western Europe, and the company has said it has helped Huawei gain a strong position in the premium segment.

The Ascend P7 is a significant improvement from its precursor P6, which is not 4G LTE-enabled. The P7 is powered by a HiSilicon Kirin 910T 1.8 GHz quad-core chipset and a Mali450 GPU. It features a 5-inch full high-definition display, an industry- leading 8-million-pixel front camera and a 13-million-pixel rear camera.

The phone is also slim at 6.5 millimeters thin and has an obviously more chic design and finish than the Ascend P6.

Huawei has also held ceremonies to unveil the P7 for regional markets such as the Middle East on June 11 in Dubai, and the South Pacific on June 17 at the CommunicAsia in Singapore, respectively.

It is priced at 699 Singapore dollars in Singapore, 499 euros in Europe and 2,888 yuan in China, respectively. In comparison, the iPhone 5s is now selling at 988 Singapore dollars or above, or 649 U.S. dollars and above.

The phone has been well received online and selling quickly from online stores.

Huawei sold 52 million units of smart phones in 2013, making it the third largest producer of smart phones after Samsung and Apple, though it is still far behind the two leaders in terms of sales value.

The company is hoping to capture more of the market in the coming years by capitalizing on its advantage in LTE technology. At the CommunicAsia from June 17 to June 20, Huawei put on display products such as the 4G LTE-enabled Ascend G6 and the LTE Cat-4 enabled MediaPad X1.

At another briefing on Tuesday, a senior executive of Huawei said that the company has raised the growth target for its enterprise business group this year to 40 percent from the previously announced target of 30 percent.

William Dong, president of solutions and marketing department, South Pacific enterprise business department, said that the target for the South Pacific regional market is similar to the overall growth target for the enterprise business group, and that it expects the growth to come from sectors such as government services, transportation and utilities.

Dong said that while the sales for markets like Indonesia have great potentials, Huawei has seen very strong sales growth in the enterprise business segment in Singapore and Australia. He said he is expecting the enterprise business revenue this year to at least double for the Singapore market, and close to double for the Australia market.

The revenue of Huawei's enterprise business group grew by 32.4 percent year on year in 2013 to hit 15.3 billion yuan (2.45 billion U.S. dollars), or over 6 percent of Huawei's total revenue.