Huawei appointed Colin Giles, former executive vice president of sales at Nokia and an ex-member of the Finnish firm’s “Leadership Team”, as executive vice president of the Chinese supplier’s Consumer Business Group, charged with developing the firm’s brand for smartphones.

When Nokia announced back in April 2012 that Giles would be stepping down from his post, the reason given was that, after years of travel, he decided to leave the company to be closer to his family.

The lure of Huawei, however, has clearly proven too hard to resist. And being in charge of global marketing for Huawei’s growing range devices, more travel looks to be on the cards.

“Colin has achieved phenomenal success in his previous roles in the industry and has a wealth of experience in mobile brand marketing, device sales, and open channel development,” said Richard Yu, chief executive at Huawei’s Consumer Business Group.

Giles, too, was equally enthusiastic about joining the Chinese firm.

“Over the last couple of years, the company has already made big strides in the global marketplace with the introduction of flagship products that quickly became the talk of the town, like the world’s slimmest smartphone Ascend P6 launched just weeks ago,” he said.

Huawei Consumer Business Group recorded sales revenue of $7.5 billion in 2012, a year-on-year growth of 60 per cent, and shipped 127 million units of devices globally, among which 32 million units were smartphones.

In the first quarter of 2013, Huawei ranked number four in global market share for smartphone shipments, according to research reports from Strategy Analytics and IDC.