Huawei aims to become number one smartphone maker by 2020
Huawei boss Richard Yu said he aims to make the company the number one smartphone player in the world by 2020 after overtaking Apple this year.
The Chinese tech giant became the second largest smartphone seller this year and Yu told CNBC he expects it to overtake leader Samsung by 2020.
"Next year, we will be very close to number one, maybe we will be on par with Samsung. And at least the year after, maybe we have a chance (to be number one), the year 2020," Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei's consumer division, told CNBC.
The CEO says he encouraged risk-taking, which has helped Huawei grow quickly.
"I encourage the team to have this innovation capability, to make bold innovations, to do something which some guy feels is a little bit crazy, to challenge ourselves and the industry," Yu said.
Yu also said that AI will be a key technology that will take smartphones to the next level in the future and will give the company the edge they need to keep growing.
"AI is coming. AI will be the engine for all the future services. AI will be elementary to working on many devices, it will connect all the apps, you can get all the services from this AI capability. The biggest changes in the next 10 years will be AI-enabled phones capability,” he said.
Yu also addressed trade war going on between China and the US and said they don't need to wait on the US market: "China and US trade war is creating a higher barrier for us. Because the consumer business is so big, I think we can focus on other market rather than U.S. market," he said.