HUAWEI Technologies Co. seems to be taking a page out of Samsung Electronics Co.’s playbook.

    Three months after Samsung debuted its Galaxy S4 smartphone at a flashy event in New York with a Broadway-style show, the Chinese company is trying to build up a similar hype for its smartphone launch event in London today.

    In its first standalone global product launch, Shenzhen-based Huawei, known globally for its telecom equipment such as antennas and base stations, will debut its flagship smartphone, the Ascend P6, at London’s Roundhouse, a historic performing arts venue that has hosted concerts by rock bands The Doors and Led Zeppelin. Previously, Huawei has unveiled new handsets rather quietly at trade shows such as the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. For Huawei, which generates about 70 percent of its revenue overseas, Europe is its biggest market outside China.

    Huawei, the world’s second-largest supplier of telecom network equipment after Sweden’s Ericsson, is trying to establish itself as a consumer brand by increasing marketing efforts. The outcome of the London event and subsequent sales of the P6 could determine the future of Huawei’s smartphone business, at a time when its core telecom equipment business faces more challenges due to security concerns raised by lawmakers in the United States and the United Kingdom.

    The company’s smartphone business faces an uphill battle. Huawei is not well-known among consumers, even though it was the world’s fourth-largest smartphone vendor in the first quarter according to research firm IDC. Huawei’s handset business has grown over the years by selling low-cost models, many of them marketed under telecom operators’ names. Last year, about half of the company’s smartphones shipped globally were priced between US$100 and US$150, according to research firm Canalys.

    But Huawei is hoping that by beefing up marketing, it will generate more buzz for its smartphones. The company doesn’t disclose its marketing spending.

    “We expect the Ascend P6 to work miracles,” said Richard Yu, who heads Huawei’s consumer business group, in a recent post on Sina Weibo, a popular Twitter-like microblog site. For the past few weeks, Yu has shared bits and pieces of information on the new “ultrathin” smartphone. He has posted on his Facebook page a photo of the P6, showing parts of the phone’s display and rounded edge.

    While Huawei has declined to give out details on the new smartphone, several technology blog sites have already reported that the P6 will likely come with a 4.7-inch display, a metal casing and is likely to be just a little over 6 millimeters thick. The phone is expected to run on Google Inc.’s Android operating system.

    In the past year, the company has been rolling out more Huawei-branded smartphones — rather than those sold under carriers’ names — with large high-resolution screens and other features typically offered by better-known competitors. The P6 likely represents Huawei’s latest and biggest step in that direction.(SD-Agencies)Agencies