Selling Ice to Eskimos

With 88,000 employees, Huawei should be an internationally recognised telco brand. Their recent wins in Northern Europe against Nokia Siemens and Ericsson will certainly put them on the map.


Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies shot past Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens in 2009 to become the world's No. 2 telecom-equipment provider, powered by quality and product upgrades on top of its long-standing low prices.


In the past year, it has won a slew of lucrative, prestigious contracts -- recently beating out rivals Ericsson and Nokia Siemens for a deal to build Norway's pioneering 4G cell-phone network, one of the world's first -- and showed continued strength in the burgeoning Indian and Chinese markets. 


The sum of these deals was good enough to double Huawei's global market share to 20% and boost 2009 sales 17.5% to $21.5 billion.