Huawei may be preparing to exit the smartphone market after U.S. ban.
What you need to know
- Huawei was banned from doing business with U.S. entities including Google and Qualcomm back in 2019.
- The company has been unable to ship new Android phones with the Google Play Store since then.
- With sales declining, Huawei is considering selling its flagship smartphone brands.
Huawei may be about to make some tough choices regarding its smartphone division. Similar to LG, the company is reportedly considering selling off parts of its smartphone division. Specifically, it might be selling off its flagship Mate and P-series brands to a consortium led by Shanghai government-backed investment firms after months of declining sales. If the sale is successful, it will see Huawei exit the high-end smartphone market. Once again, just like LG, Huawei has issued a strongly worded denial.
Reuters reported on Monday:
However, Huawei has yet to make a final decision on the sale and the talks might not conclude successfully, according to the two sources, as the company is still trying to manufacture at home its in-house designed high-end Kirin chips which power its smartphones.
“Huawei has learned there are unsubstantiated rumours circulating regarding the possible sale of our flagship smartphone brands,” a Huawei spokesman said. “There is no merit to these rumours whatsoever. Huawei has no such plan.”
The Shanghai government said it was not aware of the situation and declined to comment further.
Huawei once seemed poise to overtake Samsung in terms of sales in the Android world, it even made some of the best Android phones in terms of hardware. Yet a Trump ban put paid to those aspirations. Huawei has currently already spun off its youth-oriented Honor brand, and doing the same to its flagship P and Mate series indicates that the company does not believe it will be able to recover even with the growing Huawei App Gallery and the new Biden administration.
With Huawei’s sales going down quarter over quarter, it seems like the deal is a matter of when rather than if.
Huawei P40 Pro
$1000 at Huawei
Huawei still makes powerful smartphone hardware, and the P40 Pro is one of the latest examples of those. As one of the first Huawei flagships without the Google Play Store, however, it does come with a pretty large caveat emptor attached.
