Huawei to double overseas sales

　　HUAWEI Technologies, China’s largest phone-equipment maker, said sales to Europe, Asia and other overseas markets will more than double to US$670 million this year as investment in the phone industry at home contracts. Chairwoman Sun Yafang made the prediction after signing a US$50 million contract with Ad- vanced Info Services Pcl in Bangkok Wednesday to help Thailand’s biggest mobile-phone operator expand its network. Huawei’s push overseas comes as China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd. and other Chinese phone companies scale back capital investment. China Mobile, the world’s biggest mobile phone operator by users, pared its spending by a fifth in the first half of the year. Huawei earlier reported overseas sales of US$150 million in the first quarter and said it expects global revenue to rise to a third of sales from a 10th in five years. ‘’They know that the China market isn’t going to sustain them going forward,’’ said Andrew Chetham, an analyst with Gartner Dataquest in Hong Kong, which counts Huawei among its clients. “They really want to become a global player.” Huawei spends only US$200 million a year on research and development, which may not be enough to sustain its overseas strategy, Chetham said. That compares with US$4 billion at rival Alcatel SA and about US$3.5 billion at Lucent Technologies Inc. last year, Bloomberg figures show. (SD-Agencies)