CHICAGO—Economic woes hover over the WiMAX World 2008 show, but not everyone at the show sees the financial downturn as a negative.

Robert Fox, chief branding officer for Huawei’s wireless product line, said in an interview the Chinese company knows how to deal with low margins. That ability could help Huawei find new markets for its products, he said, including WiMAX.

Huawei isn’t well-known in the United States, where it has won some telecom deals but hasn’t been a big player. In the wireless industry, its biggest contract wins have been with Leap Wireless, where it won deals to build out three Pacific Northwest markets and recently won a larger contract for Leap’s Chicago network, said Charlie Martin, Huawei’s chief technology officer.

Martin said he thinks Huawei could win some converts with its new WiMAX pico base station, announced at WiMAX World. He said the plug-and-play unit can help carriers improve their network coverage, especially indoors. Picocells are especially useful for enterprises, campuses, malls and airports, Martin said.

Instead of deploying a macro base station to improve coverage, carriers could use picocells at lower cost in some circumstances, Martin said. He cited research that about 70% of communications traffic occurs indoors, where wireless networks using higher bands can be challenged.

Huawei has made big investments in the United States in recent years. It has numerous offices around the country and has nearly 500 employees. Its business spans access technologies, including W-CDMA, CDMA, GSM and LTE, in addition to WiMAX. It also has client devices like picocells and femtocells.

Fox said Huawei likes its prospects in the United States. He said the company is optimistic it can gain WiMAX business, including with the next phase of the network build-out for the new Clearwire. Sprint’s Xohm network and Clearwire plan a merger that’s awaiting regulatory approval.