Huawei designing new Mate 10 to take on Apple's iPhone 8

Huawei is gearing up to go head-to-head with the hotly anticipated 10th-anniversary edition of Apple’s iPhone by putting the finishing touches on its most powerful device yet, the Mate 10.

The Mate 10 will debut right around the time Apple is expected to take the lid off its own flagship device, but will trump the iPhone in many aspects, said Richard Yu, chief of Huawei’s consumer division.

“We will have an even more powerful product,” Yu said in an interview. “The Mate 10, which has much longer battery life with a full-screen display, quicker changing speed, better photographing capability and many other features that will help us compete with Apple.”

The world’s No. 3 smartphone maker, which in 2016 declared it will someday surpass both Apple and Samsung Electronics Co. in market share, is shooting for shipments of 140 million to 150 million units in 2017 – up marginally from 139 million in 2016. 

Huawei is the largest of a coterie of Chinese smartphone makers that have grabbed global market share via affordable phones with premium specifications. 

The company, founded by former army engineer Ren Zhengfei three decades ago, has managed to make inroads into segments once dominated by Apple and Samsung.

It enlisted prestigious camera brand Leica to improve photo quality as a dual-camera became standard-issue for flagship handsets. Its latest, the 5.5-inch P10 Plus, goes for as much as 5,588 yuan. The company also introduced its first laptop – the MateBook X – in May to compete with HP and Lenovo in personal computers.

“We are giving up the very low-end devices because the margin in this is extremely low, and it’s not making enough profit for us,” Yu said.

Huawei also intends to sustain the pace of an overseas expansion that’s already taken it into Europe and other more developed markets. “The priority is Europe, China and Japan, where the economy is healthy and people are able to consume them.”