Huawei gives aggressive push to consumer gadgets

HONG KONG, May 10 (Reuters): China's Huawei Technologies is making an aggressive push into the consumer electronics space, marketing its new smartphones and tablet PCs in glitzy Beijing malls and even a Milan fashion show as it seeks to emerge from decades of obscurity. Huawei is betting on Google Inc's Android operating system for its smartphones, taking aim at grabbing market share from Apple's iPhone and Samsung Electronics' Galaxy in a move that is pushing the private company to open its once closed doors to the outside technology world. After repeated requests, Huawei recently granted rare access to a research and development centre in Shenzhen, putting on display its new approach and its entry into the consumer space. The building is dotted with evidence of Huawei's drive for innovation. On one floor, the R&D team displayed an array of products still in the works -- a 4G network card, a smartphone with a wireless charger and a snazzy smartphone with a see-through case. Having built itself into the world's No 2 network equipment provider, with plans to nearly quadruple revenues to $100 billion in ten years, analysts are banking that Huawei is up to its newest consumer market challenge. "I cannot predict if Huawei has the makings to be Asia's next Samsung, but I would definitely not count it out," said Matt Walker, principal analyst at research firm Ovum. Huawei has surpassed the likes of Alcatel Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks among gear makers. It now hopes to double its cell phone shipments to 60 million this year, including 15 million smartphones. "We hope to become the world's No 3 in cell phone shipments and the world's No 5 in terms of revenues within five years," Victor Xu, chief marketing officer of Huawei Devices, told the reporter as he played around with a Huawei IDEOS smartphone. Under Huawei's previous direction, consumers weren't "able to see our brand on the things we make," Xu added, occasionally slipping into his pocket to grab his personal phone - an iPhone - when it rang. "But now we're changing our strategy."