Huawei to Keep Making Smartphones Running Windows Phone

Comments Come as Microsoft Set to Produce Own Hardware After Buying Nokia Handset Business 

Huawei will continue to make smartphones running the Windows Phone operating system, even as Microsoft is set to produce its own hardware after buying Nokia's handset business.

STOCKHOLM—A Huawei Technologies Co. executive said Thursday the Chinese company will continue to make smartphones running the Windows Phone operating system, even as Microsoft Corp. is set to produce its own hardware after buying Nokia Corp.’s handset business.

Earlier this year, Huawei became the fourth company to sell phones running Microsoft’s smartphone platform when it launched the Ascend W1 smartphone in January. Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co. and HTC Corp. also sell Windows phones, with the bulk of the volume belonging to Nokia.

“We will continue to develop devices running Windows Phone, and launch more products,” Richard Ren, Huawei executive who heads the company’s consumer unit in Europe, told reporters in Stockholm on Thursday. “We remain one of Microsoft’s strategic partners.”

The comments ease concerns that last week’s announcement that Microsoft is taking over Nokia’s handset business will complicate the relationship between the U.S. software giant and its hardware partners, particularly in the smartphone business.

The Nokia deal is designed to give Microsoft the ability to launch Windows phones in a more timely manner. Analysts, however, have been concerned it could make hardware makers wary to support the platform—much like what happened when Microsoft’s relationship with PC partners became strained as the company launched its own Windows-running Surface tablets last year.

For Huawei, however, Windows Phone is not a major part of the overall handset volume. The lion’s share of phones sold by the Chinese telecom run Google Inc.’s Android operating system. In the first half of 2013 year, it was ranked as the fourth-largest maker of smartphones by shipment volumes, according to International Data Corp., having shipped 20 million units world-wide.