Huawei: Windows Phone-based phones ‘on hold’, Tizen has no chances

Huawei is one of the fastest-growing smartphone vendor in the world. Last year the company shipped 52 million smartphones and this year it aims to sell 80 million units. At present the company only sells phones based on Google Android operating system and despite obvious risks the firm has no plans to use Microsoft's Windows Phone platform again anytime soon and does not believe that Tizen OS has chances to become successful.

“We have tried using the Windows Phone OS,” said Richard Yu, the head of Huawei's consumer business group, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “But it has been difficult to persuade consumers to buy a Windows phone. It wasn't profitable for us. We were losing money for two years on those phones. So for now we have decided to put any releases of new Windows phones on hold. We have worries about Android being the only option, but we have no choice. And we have a good collaboration with Google.”

Using only one operating system poses a lot of risks, but Huawei does not seem to be too concerned about this. The company does not plan to build its own operating system and does not believe in the Tizen operating system, which is backed by Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics and many others.

“We have no plans to use Tizen,” said Mr. Yu. “Some telecom carriers are pushing us to design Tizen phones but I say ‘no’ to them. In the past we had a team to do research on Tizen but I canceled it. We feel Tizen has no chance to be successful. Even for Windows Phone it's difficult to be successful.”

Unlike companies like Lenovo Group, Huawei does not want to acquire other companies in order to boost market share. The firm prefers to invest in research and development and create better products, not take over other market players.

“We are not so eager to acquire companies,” said the executive. “We invest more in research and development. Larger scale can help lower costs and it's important. But it's not the most important thing. Without investing more in R&D, you can't bring better products and more value to consumers.”

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KitGuru Says: The claims made by Richard Yu confirm that neither Windows Phone nor Tizen have a lot of chances against Google’s Android. Basically, the Android is now a new Windows and that is not going to change anytime soon…

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