Huawei unveils "slimmest" smartphone

The new Ascend smartphone from Huawei.

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, China's largest maker of telecommunications gear, unveiled a new smartphone on Monday it is touting as the slimmest on the market as it moves to boost its share on the global consumer market.

The company's "Ascend" smartphone will help spearhead a drive into personal gadgets from mobiles to tablet PCs. Huawei Device Chairman Richard Yu said the phone will cost roughly $400, but the final price was not been set.

Privately held Huawei racked up $6.8 billion of consumer sales in 2011, Yu said.

This is up more than 40 percent from about $4.8 billion in 2010 and meets the high end of the $6 billion to $7 billion target a Huawei executive gave Reuters last November.

Huawei unveiled the Ascend smartphones - available in black, white and pink - at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The 6.68-mm thin phone will be available in April 2012 in markets from North America, Europe to Asia, the company said.

Its touchscreen is covered in Corning Inc's Gorilla Glass and runs on Texas Instruments Inc's 1.5GHz's multicore processor.

Huawei, whose switches, routers and hubs power and connect telecom networks, entered the consumer device market in 2004 and has been releasing new smartphones and tablets in a bid to become to become one of the top global handset makers in the next two years.

But in the third quarter, Huawei had only a 2.4 percent market share globally, ranking ninth in the world behind Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker; editing by Andre Grenon)