Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer, Hu-awei Telecommunications plans to capture a slice of the country’s

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growing mobile handsets market.

The company, which has sold 7.5 million handsets in the last five years since its introduction in the Indian market, has set itself an ambitious target of garnering 15 per cent market share in the mobile handsets market over the next four years.

“We are targeting a market share of 15 per cent by 2015 and a five to seven per cent share of the market by 2013,” said president, India Device business Development, Huwaei Telecommunications India, Victor Shan.

Huawei’s mobile business division reported a turnover of $ 490 million for the financial year ended March 31, 2011, which was nearly 10 per cent of its global mobile business division revenues of $ 5 billion in the same period.

India’s current mobile subscriber base has already crossed 800 million and at the current rate of new monthly additions, is expected to reach 1.5 billion in the next four years.

The company expects the Indian market to see a sale of 170 million handset units in 2011 and expects to capture a quarter of the market share in the above Rs 3,500 range.

It ruled out venturing into the low cost handsets space.

There are currently over 200 mobile handset brands in the Indian market, with Nokia India leading the pack with a market share of 35-44 per cent.

The company on its own, however, does not disclose any figures.

Nokia India has in fact seen a steady decline in its market share, from a high of 79.8 per cent in 2007.

The second largest, according to research firm IDC, is another Chinese telecom manufacturer, G’Five, having a 10.6 per cent share.

The company, which launched three new handset models in the price range of Rs 8000-15,000, aims to sell three to four lakh handsets in the present financial year , according to the company’s marketing director Anand Narang.

The company admitted that as CDMA becomes a less preferred option for mobile consumers, who are giving preference to GSM enabled handsets, the company may eventually phase out its CDMA models.

“We will follow the industry trends in handsets. Earlier, the market used to see a sale of eight million CDMA handsets, which is now down to three million,” said director sales, P Sanjeev.