What a difference a day makes, or in this case two days. After news came out that Chinese manufacturer Huawei was shifting their focus away from the United States market due to “geopolitical reasons”, a report in the Beijing News now says that he words of Huawei’s Executive Vice-President, Eric Xu were lost in translation so to speak, and the company has no intention to abandon their hopes of gaining ground here in the states.
It would be hard to blame Huawei if they did give up on the market given the accusations of cyber espionage by some US lawmakers, a charge the manufacturer vehemently denies. Although given the history of the two countries regarding the matter it’s hardly a leap. Now according to Huawei what happened was that Mr. Xu was talking about the markets they are planning on expanding into OTHER THAN the United States. So in other words they still have the US on their radar and this was about new markets.
The company states that “this does not mean that Huawei will abandon the US market”, they are just going to be focusing their attention on European countries, which are their second largest market behind their home nation of China. That’s not to say that Huawei’s efforts to gain access to this country have been anything but impossible, and the article even says as much even as they claim that the manufacturer has made roughly $5 billion (CNY 31 billion) in revenue from the US. Hard to imagine but that’s state run media for you.
So while it remains to be seen whether the first or the second story is true I think most of us will lean more towards the former. Between political pressure and the lack of partnerships with the bigger carriers here in the United States, the writing has been on the wall for some time now. Not only that but Huawei has shrunk both their sales presence in the country as well as their R and D team from 800 to 500 employees. It seems as though those employees would be better off working in countries where they actually have a chance of selling something.