To be frank, I hadn’t realised the range of products Chinese giant Huawei made, until I visited its Chinese expo in Shanghai two weeks ago. And boxes, whether smartphones or servers, need shifting.
I first met Huawei executives in 2007 in Palermo, Sicily, when it introduced an infrastructure product to the British market.
But, until recently, the firm was most known for its smartphones, although the political hiccups over 5G and the trade wars between the US and China escalated. As a Scot, I am particularly concerned that the wars have now dragged into the Eurozone too. Scotch whisky is to face a 25 percent tariff because of some apparently unrelated spat about Europlanes.
I spoke to Michael Rae, enterprise channel manager for Huawei UK and Ireland today.
Huawei has an arrangement with two major UK distributors – Arrow and Exertis. The latter, formerly known as MicroP, can distribute all of its range, from servers, storage and infrastructure down to its consumer products, like smartphones and laptops.
Enterprise resellers and other resellers are the folk who sell to organisations. Rae said that Huawei has also “an enterprise ‘high touch’ sales team”. These people engage at a high level with big companies and bodies. But, he added, Huawei has a 100 percent indirect model.
That may be true for enterprises and mid-range companies, but Huawei’s UK consumer web site is happy to sell you smartphones and notebooks directly. Well, no difference there – Dell and Lenovo do the same.
Huawei has “gold” and “silver” partners, not much difference there between it and other UK vendors. At least it hasn’t fallen for the bronze and platinum marketing stance that other vendors pursue.
It has two levels of accreditation and certifications for system integrators and resellers that involve pre-sales training.
All in all, Huawei’s channel strategy in the UK and Ireland follow a similar model to other major vendors. ChannelEye will attend the Canalys Channel Forum later this month and discuss the shape of things to come with other vendors, distributors and resellers.
Huawei has very ambitious plans for the server ARM market, as we revealed, here.
We didn’t talk about the most delicate matter in any supply chain – margins. That’s one that is always problematical.
A US tariff on Scottish whisky? Surely some mistake, because Donald Trump’s ma came frae Stornaway.
