Huawei's iPad rival coming to Australia

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 24 June 2010 14:58

Your IT - Mobility

Huawei is gearing up to enter the mobile device market in Australia and has showcased over 30 wireless devices several of which, including its SmaKit S7 Android-based tablet are expected to hit the market soon.

The S7 along with the E5 pocket-sized 3G WiFi router are the  'Hero Products' in the line up and will be the first to market. However Huawei says its plan is to go to market through mobile operators only at this stage. While it won 't be precise on the stage of negotiations or timing, Huawei executives appeared confident that launch of these products was not far off.

It has a 16:9 ratio seven inch (18cm screen) touch screen with a 800 x 480 resolution and comes with 3G and WiFi connectivity and phone functionality. Huawei is being cagey about pricing, but a spokesman suggested it would end up costing "about half the price of an iPad." It also has an HDMI port for connection to a TV.

The E5 II Pocket WiFi/3G modem is an updated version of a product that Virgin Mobile has been offering for some time, but not aggressively marketing. It supports SPA at 7.2Mbps downstream and 5.76kbps upstream. Importantly, unlike the earlier version, which supported HSPA only at 2100MHz and 900MHz, the new device also operates on the Next G frequency of 850MHz.

The SmaKit and the E5 previewed at Huawei 's first Australian device showcase, presided over by Victor Xu, Huawei Device 's global director of strategy and marketing. With over 30 devices on show the scale of the event alone suggests that Huawei aims to me a major player in the Australian mobile device market.

On display were several Android smartphones, a variety of USB dongles, WiMAX dongles and CPE, 3G connected photo frames, videophones and machine to machine units.

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