就在一年多以前，当德国人范文迪(Hagen Fendler)开始担任华为(Huawei)手机产品首席设计总监时，他甚至还无法准确地读出自己东家的名字。
范文迪的职责是开发出得到消费者认可、最终喜爱的手机，帮助将这家中国电信设备制造商打造成一个家喻户晓的全球品牌。他表示，华为希望自己成为一个“标志性品牌”。
这是一个雄心勃勃的目标。尽管以销售额衡量，华为已是全球第二大电信设备销售商，2010年营业收入达290亿美元，但其消费者业务才起步不久。
华为2007年开始销售手机，但主要是面向电信运营商的定制手机，手机上打出的是运营商品牌。华为从去年才开始加大力度，直接向消费者销售手机产品。
华为2010年营业收入中，对电信运营商的销售额占66%，手机销售额仅占16%，其余部分是对企业客户的服务收入。华为希望未来5至10年上述三块业务的收入能更加均衡。
品牌调研机构明略行(Millward Brown)大中华区主管阿德里安•冈萨雷斯(Adrian González)表示，“中国品牌的问题在于没有什么知名度。”
“如果消费者从来没有听说过某个品牌，他们就会充满怀疑。”
在某些新兴市场，华为和中兴通讯(ZTE)等中国领先的手机生产商会占有优势，这是因为它们的手机不但价格相对低廉，而且质量非常可靠。
冈萨雷斯表示，“在尼日利亚和肯尼亚等电信服务业迅猛增长的非洲市场，这些中国品牌被视为半高端品牌。”
但总体而言，在对于铸造全球性品牌作用最大的富裕地区市场，华为不过是刚刚起步。范文迪表示，“这是一条艰难又漫长的道路”。
过去的一年里，范文迪已开始对华为的设计工作实施全面改造。为运营商设计手机时，他们重点关注的是技术可行性。他表示，现在的关注重点是满足消费者的需求。
为了让华为手机与众不同，他的团队——包含先前在诺基亚(Nokia)和索尼爱立信(Sony Ericsson)工作的设计师——想使公司出品的所有手机之间具有“家族”相似性。
范文迪表示，再微小的细节都至关重要。“能让一位潜在的顾客停下来、仔细地看看你的手机，就在于它能让人眼前一亮——可能就是手机背面或转角处弧线的细微差别。”
范文迪表示，“我们也需要设计师不能只着眼于构造一部手机出来，还要从整体理念出发，围绕着主题完成工作。”
在一个像手机这样竞争激烈的行业，这是一个重大的挑战。
IDC驻中国分析师高媛表示，“目前，中国手机制造商的关注焦点是低端智能手机。”
“中国厂商在推进品牌国际化的过程中，如何在高端智能手机市场为自己定位是一个巨大的挑战。”
调研公司Gartner的数据显示，华为2011年第二季度手机销量达到900万部。这使华为超过索尼爱立信成为全球第九大手机销售商，但与诺基亚同期9800万部的销量相比，其区区2.1%的全球市场份额简直微不足道。
译者/邢嵬
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001041264
When Hagen Fendler started as chief design director for handsets at Huawei just over a year ago, he could not even pronounce his employer’s name correctly.
His job is to help make the Chinese telecoms equipment maker a global household name by developing devices consumers will recognise and eventually adore. Huawei hopes to become an “iconic brand”, says the German.
It is an ambitious goal. For although Huawei is the world’s second-largest seller of telecom equipment by sales and had $29bn revenues in 2010, the company has a fledgling consumer business.
It started selling devices in 2007, but mostly to order from telecoms operators whose brand they bear. Only last year did Huawei start a forceful push to sell to consumers directly.
Sales to telecoms operators accounted for 66 per cent of 2010 revenues and devices for only 16 per cent, with services to enterprises accounting for the rest. In five to 10 years, Huawei wants to see more equal revenues from these three streams.
Adrian González, head of greater China at Millward Brown branding agency, says: “The issue Chinese brands have is a lack of awareness.
“If [consumers have] never heard of it, they’ll treat it with suspicion.”
In some emerging markets, China’s leading handset makers such as Huawei and ZTE have an edge as they offer reliable quality at relatively low prices.
Mr González says: “In some African markets where telecoms services are growing fast, such as Nigeria and Kenya, these Chinese brands are seen as semi-premium”.
But in the large, affluent markets that carry the most weight in forming global brands, Huawei is still at the very beginning. Mr Fendler says: “It is a challenging, long road”.
Over the past year, he has started revamping how Huawei’s designers work. When designing handsets for operators, the focus was on what was technologically possible. Now it needs to be on what consumers want, he says.
To set the company apart, his team – which includes designers who have worked for Nokia and Sony Ericsson – wants the company’s devices to have “family” resemblances to each other.
Tiny details matter, says Mr Fendler. “The difference that could make a potential buyer stop long enough to properly look at your phone can be a tiny difference in the curve of the back of the handset or its corners.
“We also need our designers not to make one thing to form, but think about the overall concept, and work in themes,” says Mr Fendler.
In an industry as competitive as handsets, that is a significant challenge.
Gao Yuan, an analyst at IDC in China, says: “Chinese handset makers are currently focused on low-end smartphones.
“How to position themselves in high-end smartphones is a huge challenge in the process of internationalising their brands.”
Huawei sold 9m handsets in the second quarter of 2011, according to Gartner, the research firm. That makes the Chinese firm the world’s ninth-largest handset seller ahead of Sony Ericsson, but its 2.1 per cent global market share pales in comparison with the 98m devices sold by Nokia in the same period.
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