Until now the UK has only seen Huawei handsets as white label offerings from the networks and mostly on PAYG. Both the Blaze and Vision are aimed at the youth market and will be at an affordable price point.
We should see the phones in time from Christmas each will run Android 2.3 and boast a 1Ghz Qualcomm CPU.
Mark Mitchinson, Samsung VP for UK and Ireland, states in an interview with mobile magazine last month (8 July 2011) that while Huawei would continue to provide its operator partners with white label products, its own branded devices would be arriving in the UK this year starting with the Blaze.
He said: “If you look at the customer base of many operators some 50% to 60% of them are still 2G feature phone users, so that is where the opportunity is for us.”
He added that Huawei would be undertaking some marketing activity this year and “next year we will start to build something more substantial in terms of marketing”.