Huawei led off its Ascend Mate 2 4G announcement with some fairly bombastic statements as a fledgling new smartphone maker.
"We now according to IDC are the third largest smartphone maker in the world" Colin Giles claimed at the Huawei press conference. "Keep in mind for the last three years we've only been shipping under the Huawei brand."
Three years ago Huawei made a business shift to start building products in its own brand instead of making phones for other companies. Within this short time, Giles claims that Huawei has begun shipping 95% of its products with its own brand.
Thus far the company started off 2013 shipping 10 million smartphone units and finished off the year with 17.5 million units to more than 100 markets worldwide.
"Our target for 2014 is we will ship 80 million smartphones this year," Giles said.
A global leader
Giles also wasn't shy to call the company a leader in the global market as he noted the company's Ascend Mate started the big screen phone, phablet movement.
"We created a trend," Giles boasted. "We shipped a 6.1 inch screen and many of you said 'why would you need a product that big,' Consumer take up has been really great, people now realize why you want to have such a great screen on your product."
In a similar stroke Giles said Huawei's global brand awareness increased by more than 100% just between 2012 and 2013 alone.
"This is really great news for such a young brand such as Huawei," he said before airing an even more arrogant statement on it's ability to build 4G LTE networks.
"Only certain companies have the capability of building 4G and LTE, and Huawei is one of those countries," Giles quipped.
Giles went on to say Huawei is already a leader in the LTE world having launched the first LTE network in 2009 and has since continued to roll out more service to "110 of the world's 200 LTE networks in 100 of the capital cites worldwide."
Too big for its britches
The fledgling Chinese manufacturer was not short of any bravado at its press conference but Giles statements are presumptuous.
To say that Huawei is only one of the few companies able to build a 4G LTE network clearly forgets about US networks such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-mobile. Not to mention Orange LTE network in Europe, or Optus in Australia, or Norway's Netcom.
Similarly, the young telecom only has a few notable phones - such as the Ascend P6 and Ascend Mate in its line up - and now Huawei is already comparing the greatness of its latest Ascend Mate 2 4G against the iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S4.
It's too early to tell if Huawei will make its lofty goal to ship 80 million smartphones this year but the company certainly does not seem like it's slowing down at all. Perhaps next year, we will see Huawei put in an flagship entry right along side the LG, HTC, and the other smartphone mainstays.
