Huawei Technologies Co., China’s largest maker of telecommunications equipment, had yet to reach agreements with large US phone companies in its quest to take customers from Cisco Systems Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc., The Wall Street Journal said.

Huawei had difficulty building its brand name in the United States, partly because it changed its name there to Futurewei, because Americans couldn’t pronounce the Chinese name, the newspaper said.

The company also encountered troubles adapting to the culture, raising suspicions on adherence to rules on intellectual property rights and scaring away some job applicants by demanding reports detailing expert knowledge, the newspaper said.

The lack of progress in the United States contrasted with Huawei’s success in other markets, including Germany and France, where it took business from Siemens AG and Alcatel SA, the paper said.

The Shenzhen-based company rose to prominence in China on low costs and an aggressive sales, techniques it has been using to good effect in global markets to win business from more established telecom equipment makers.

Huawei said last week its overseas sales surpassed domestic proceeds in the first half of 2005, underscoring the firm’s increasingly global presence.

Huawei said its global sales jumped 85 percent to 33 billion yuan (US$4.07 billion) in the first half of 2005, compared with a year ago.

(Shenzhen Daily August 1, 2005)