Asian mobile giants go ultra-fast in race for smartphone pie

BARCELONA—Asian mobile telecom giants Huawei and LG on Sunday launched a new generation of ultra-rapid smartphones, in a race to catch up with market leaders Apple and Samsung.

China’s Huawei touted its new Ascend D as the “world’s fastest smartphone,” as it boasts a quad core processor, double that of other smartphones which are using dual core at the moment, making them at least twice as rapid.

“We are proud to … introduce a world first at the 2012 Mobile World Congress with the Ascend D quad, the fastest smartphone,” said Richard Yu, Huawei Device chairman, on the eve of the industry’s biggest fair in Barcelona.

“We’ve listened to people’s top demands from smartphones: speed, long battery life, high-quality visual and audio capabilities and a compact lightweight handset,” said Yu, saying that the phone meets these requirements.

LG, the world’s third-biggest mobile phone maker, likewise pushed out a quad core phone, the Optimus 4xHD.

But beyond a speedy phone, the South Korean giant also previewed a “tabletphone.”

With a touch screen of five inches, the Optimus Vu is sized as “a product that is in between” a phone and a tablet,” said Daniel Hernandez, the group’s marketing director for Europe.

The phone, which is now available in the home Korean market, will arrive in Europe in the last three months of 2012, he added.

LG is not the first to move toward bigger smartphone screens. Fellow South Korean Samsung in October launched the Galaxy Note, which also has the same intermediate format.

“We think there is a market, because it’s a product that replaces the tablet and the smartphone at the same time,” said Hernandez.