Prior to the Nexus 6P being announced by Google and manufactured by Huawei, many of us in the US didn’t know about Huawei. And many don’t know how to pronounce the name. Huawei isn’t a popular brand in the west, unfortunately, like most Chinese brands (Xiaomi, ZTE, Elephone and others). But Huawei is looking to change that. Not too long ago, Huawei launched gethuawei.com in the US which is a website for users to buy their products, and they are not tied to carriers. For example, right now you can buy the Ascend Mate 2, P8 Lite, SnapTo, Nexus 6P, TalkBand B2, the Huawei Watch, as well as a couple of tablets in the MediaPad T1 8.0 and T1 8.0 Pro. And there will be more coming, according to the company.
During the media tour here in China with Huawei, we were able to speak with their VP of Product Line, Bruce Lee, and in regards to the US they are planning to make a bigger investment here. Now while he did decline to go into detail on what that meant, we can hope that it’ll mean more devices, more advertising and better brand awareness. Of course, the Nexus 6P is definitely helping with that, already and it hasn’t even been out for a month yet.
Another one of the topics in regards to the US was bringing their Kirin chipset into US models. Devices like the Ascend Mate 2 and the P8 Lite here in the US both sport Qualcomm chipsets. The company’s response to that was basically that Qualcomm knows the US market better, and that’s more in terms of certification with the carriers as well as LTE bands in the US. However, regarding CDMA, Lee did state that they are doing testing with US operators and their Kirin chipsets. Now this is mainly to allow roaming for their customers when they visit the US. The company has also been purchasing third party technology for CDMA and have a licensing agreement for CDMA tech with Qualcomm.
Qualcomm is currently the number one manufacturer in China, and they are looking to catch up and pass the giants of Samsung and Apple. Coming to the US would definitely help there, but as always, it’s going to be a slow process.