Haier showcases smart watch at Barcelona Congress

Haier stand at Mobile World Congress. [Photo by Cecily Liu/chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese white goods giant Haier showcased its new smart watch at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona taking place between February 22- 25, marking another milestone in the firm's expansion into the consumer products sector in Europe.

The Haier Watch, which goes on sale in the second half of 2016, can be connected to the Haier smartphone so users can read messages on their watches, monitor their health and control their phone cameras.

Pierre-Andre Denis, consumer electronics marketing and outsourcing manager for Haier Europe, said that the gradual roll-out of consumer products in Europe is important for Haier's brand reputation building strategy.

Haier's strategy now is to increase the sales of its watch and smartphones, so that later it can launch total home solutions to customers, meaning it can help consumers connect their home appliances like refrigerators and televisions with portable products like phones and watches.

Consumers can then enjoy the convenience and flexibility of controlling their home appliances remotely.

"Although our products are not connected with each other currently, we'd like to connect them in the future once our products are widely used, so we are now looking to build up market share," Denis said.

Haier, which is already well-known for its refrigerator products across Europe, ventured into the consumer and wearable products field three years ago with the launch of its smartphones.

Currently Haier's smartphones are sold in Italy, France, German, Spain and Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and account for between 1 – 1.5 percent of the total smartphone market in those countries, according to the company's estimates.

Denis said Haier's smartphones and watches are similar to products created by other brands in function, but have more competitive prices. For example, the Haier V5, a premium product in its Voyage smartphone collection, has a 5.5-inch (14 cm) full HD screen with support for gesture control, running on a 1.7 GHz 64-bit processor, and retails at 349 euros. Haier's smart watch retails from 199 euros onwards.

A year ago at the World Mobile Congress Haier launched a smart watch for children, which allows children's locations to be tracked by their parents, and children can make calls to their parents at the press of a button.

The children's watch, retailing from 99 euros onwards, has just become available on the market in Europe this month.

Haier Europe, whose headquarters are in France, has subsidiaries in Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia and Spain. Sales for the 2014-15 financial year were worth about 500 million euros. It employs about 500 people in Europe.

To contact the reporter: cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com