MWC: Huawei announces new smartphone and tablet

Not to be outdone at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Huawei has announced a new smartphone and an update to its tablet range. According to the company’s chief marketing officer, these new products will help the company increases its presence in the high-end mobile market.

Huawei announced a new smartphone and an updated tablet, both based on Android, in further evidence of the vendor’s aim to increase its presence in the high-end device market. Huawei Device’s chief marketing officer Victor Xu said the company plans to ship ‚more than 10 million‚ smartphones in 2011, up from 3 million shipments last year.

The vendor’s Ideos X3 is its first smartphone based on version 2.3 of the Android OS, also known as Gingerbread, and has a 3.2-inch screen. Huawei boasts the new handset’s thickness of 11.2 mm makes it ‚the thinnest handset on the market today‚ . Comparable handsets from Motorola (12.4 mm), HTC (12 mm) and Sony Ericsson (15 mm) are chunkier than the new model, claims Huawei. Plus the vendor has added its own over-the-air and online upgrade solution, as well as a data back-up service, to imprint some of its own identity on the Android template. The X3 wil be available first in Japan in March. Pricewise, it will be positioned as a mid-range smartphone. In the UK for instance it will be free for users taking out a ¬£25 a month subscription.

The updated Ideos S7 Slim is a tablet based on the older version 2.2 of the Android OS, also known as Froyo. Its 7-inch screen is smaller than some rivals, but does offer both 3G and W-Fi connectivity. It will be launched in April this year. In terms of pricing, Huawei says the S7 Slim will cost £350-£400 in the UK.

In addition to its new smartphone and tablet, Huawei also announced a new datacard, the HiLink, which will be launched in Q2 this year, and Mobile WiFi Smart Pro, a new wireless modem, also available from Q2.

– Story courtesy Mobile World Congress Show Daily