Huawei expands retail presence

A defiant Huawei is opening retail stores in Sydney to increase its footprint in consumer technology.

China's Huawei is expanding its Australian retail presence with new stores.

A defiant Huawei is opening retail stores in Sydney to increase its footprint in consumer technology.

Undeterred by government attacks, the China communications giant and consumer technology manufacturer is showing off its new store at World Square in central Sydney. It opens on October 1.

Huawei already has a store at Chatswood on the north shore in Sydney near its Australian headquarters.

It is building another store at Hurstville in Sydney’s south and plans to open it near the end of the year.

Huawei also plans to open a store in Melbourne but that idea is on hold with the pandemic.

“We just have to continue to grow in the current economic environment and see what happens,” says Paul Jowett, marketing director for Huawei consumer business Australia.

Huawei’s market has heavily diminished in Australia with the federal government leading the charge internationally to ban the use of Huawei 5G equipment in Australia, citing security concerns.

Separate action by the US government to prohibit American companies selling hardware and software to Huawei has impacted sales of its smartphones. Huawei phones can no longer run popular official apps such as YouTube and Google apps, nor the official version of the Google Android operating system. Huawei however has found workarounds for its customers.

Huawei’s shopfront in central Sydney prepares to open.

Mr Jowett says Huawei continues to be positive about its Australian business. “There’s no question that we face some challenges around like most businesses, but we will continue to bring the most innovative products to the Australian market like P 40 Pro Plus (smartphone), the Watch Fit (smartwatch) and the Matebook X Pro.

“We said at the start of the year that not only are we going to continue going forward with our handsets, but we want to increase our range and build on our strategy.”

Mr Jowett says there is no question that Huawei wants to build more retail stores “but we just have to monitor what happens”.

He says the Sydney CBD store is a “full service store” that not only offers sales of Huawei’s consumer ecosystem. Customers can bring in devices to get help with setting them up, or ask for repairs.

He says devices that can’t be fixed in store will be sent to service partner Havitel.

Huawei has begun to ditch the use of Google Android with its phones. Its P40 Pro and P40 Pro Plus handsets use Huawei’s home baked “mobile services” which is a different operating system based on open-source Android.

Huawei has announced its new Watch Fit which will sell at its stores and mainstream retail outlets.

Mr Jowett says the store will help consumers load the apps they had on a previous phone onto their new Huawei devices. There are three ways to do this: using Phone Clone (a cloning app), App Gallery (Huawei’s app store) and Petal Search (an app search facility).

Users can still access apps like YouTube and Google Maps by using browser versions with web app shortcuts on their phone’s home screen. Huawei is making app substitutes available such as TomTom navigation.

Mr Jowett says the cameras on Huawei devices “continue to be market leading”. He says the Huawei P40 Plus smartphone has five cameras on the back and two at front and one is 40 megapixels.

He says Huawei isn’t about to give up in the consumer electronics market in Australia. “We have a very solid fan base here in Australia based on the success of the products. We‘re going to continue to build on that,” he says.

“We mentioned at the beginning of the year that we‘re absolutely here to stay.”

JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, The Good Guys, Amazon, MobileCiti and Kogan are among retailers supporting and selling Huawei products.

Mr Jowett says the brand is supported by Chinese consumers in Australia “but we‘re very lucky that our consumer base is very diverse, like everybody else, and we’re just very grateful that these guys continue to support us.”