8 facts about the Simms & Huawei deal

Last week the local distributor Simm's (which is soon being re-branded to expressonline) announced a partnership with Huawei (read our full story here).

We sat down with Paul Johnston, General Manager to discuss the distributors move. Here is some of the key facts:

1) Both parties took seven long months to work out the partnership.

2) It started with a NZ only distribution discussion, then widened to a ANZ discussion.

3) Product range initially limited to enterprise networking products, but will expand.

4) Johnston likes this staged approach, so they can maximise the opportunity on each new range. ie bring on new specialist channel partners to sell the storage products before taking on the CCTV products.

5) In the first two days nine channel partners had made contact to sell the product range. Johnston anticipates a hundreds of new partners.

6) The enterprise division of Huawei won't officially be setup in ANZ until August.

7) Huawei is majority owned by its employees.

8) Vodafone Australia & British Telecom have recently signed big deals with Huawei.

If you have other questions you want us to ask about the new arrangement, let us know below.