Huawei: we can be bigger than Apple or Samsung in two years

Number 2

Huawei's CEO, Richard Yu, has stated that the Chinese smartphone brand can overtake either Samsung or Apple by the end of 2018.

Speaking at CES 2016, said that the company is currently the third biggest manufacturer in the world at the moment, running behind Apple and Samsung, largely due to the proliferation of lower-cost smartphones in emerging nations.

However, the CEO now believes that the company is capable of taking second place after posting a 70% increase in revenue year on year.

Whether he believes that Huawei can be a bigger manufacturer than Samsung or Apple wasn't clear – but it's likely that Apple is going to be the one that's vulnerable in Yu's eyes.

The CEO also proudly proclaimed that Huawei now has 76% brand awareness, where people can recognise which brand they're looking at – up from 3% in 2011. However, he didn't say whether people were able to pronounce the name…

Cooler and faster

The claim was made at Huawei's CES press conference, which wasn't without its jabs at the rest of the industry. There was a thinly-veiled attack on the Snapdragon 810 chip from Qualcomm, which has reportedly struggled with overheating at high power in the last year.

The new Huawei Kirin chip, powering the Mate 8, is dubbed 'cool and fast' – and apparently more powerful than both Huawei's and Samsung's S6 chip.

Mategory

Yes. Mategory. You read that correctly.

Oh, and the best moment of the conference: the Huawei Mate 8 is so distinct from the rest of the market, thanks to its power and performance, that it lives in its own category.

Which Huawei has called Mategory. *Mic drop*

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.