For those who like to track the career paths of mobile industry movers and shakers, here's an appointment to note: Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has named Colin Giles as executive vice president of its Consumer Business Group with immediate effect.

Giles was formerly at Nokia Corp., where he spent 20 years and held global responsibility for all product and services sales until mid-2012, when the handset giant revamped its sales structure. (See Nokia Loses More Than €1.57B.)

Now Giles is responsible for global marketing, retail and open channel development at a Huawei division that is making a lot of noise and having a significant impact on the mobile device market. As the vendor notes in its press release announcing the appointment of Giles:

Huawei's device business is most certainly on the up and garnered a lot of attention recently with the launch of the Ascend P6 smartphone.

Nokia, meanwhile, is still grappling with its smartphone strategy and even appears to be prepared to lean more heavily on the network infrastructure market for support. (See Nokia to Take Full Control of NSN, Why Is NSN Only Worth $4.4B?, Euronews: Nokia Loses Market Share, Tries Metal and Nokia on the Road to Hell?)

Giles might also have some interesting insight to share with his fellow Huawei executives should the Chinese vendor ever seriously consider a bid for Nokia. (See Euronews: Does Huawei Have Designs on Nokia?)

-- Ray Le Maistre, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading