AFP, Barcelona :
China’s Huawei, LG and other phone firms unveiled new smartphones on Sunday as they tried to capitalise on Samsung’s withdrawal of its flagship device after faulty batteries led several of the handsets to catch fire.
Samsung, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, had no device of its own to show at the week-long Mobile World Congress, the phone industry’s largest annual trade fair, in Barcelona in northeastern Spain, its usual showcase.
The company is taking its time to put out a new handset after it was forced to recall millions of its Galaxy Note 7 phones and discontinue the model in October.
The delay in putting out a new phone comes as its parent firm, South Korean conglomerate Samsung Group, is caught up in a corruption scandal that saw its chief arrested last week.
Apple, the world’s second largest smartphone maker, as usual steered clear of the event, leaving smaller phone makers with a rare opportunity to grab the spotlight at the fair.
China’s Huawei, which has taken aim in recent years at both Samsung and Apple in the high end of the market, presented a new flagship model, the P10 and the larger P10 Plus on Sunday, the eve of the official start of the fair on Monday.
The devices feature dual Leica rear camera lenses, a longer-lasting battery and fingerprint sensor system.
But the upgrades would not be enough for the company to close the gap with its main rivals, Samsung and Apple, said Thomas Husson, consumer devices analyst at Forrester Research.
“Huawei is a brand that lacks a strong personality, especially in the United States and in Western Europe,” he said.
The company managed to gain some ground on Samsung and Apple last year, increasing its share of the smartphone sector to 8.9 percent in 2016 from 7.3 percent a year earlier, according to the Gartner consultancy group.
Samsung saw its market share shrink over the same period by two full percentage points to 20.5 percent and Apple contracted to 14.4 percent from 15.9 percent.
