It seems like several product designers from Huawei got arrested for espionage. According to a new report, six Huawei products designers leaked confidential data to a competitor from China, a well-known smartphone manufacturer, LeEco. The report also claims that Huawei already took measures against said product designers by taking things into court, the company decided to press charges against them.
On the flip side, LeEco had already denied said charges, the company claims that they did not receive any information from Huawei’s designers. Huawei claims that LeEco stole 2 patents for an antenna design and a children’s smartwatch, and the aforementioned designers allegedly shared all this info with LeEco. Now, if the source is to be believed, this whole situation will probably end up in court, Chinese court, as both of these companies are Chinese, and the report is coming from Asia. As you probably already know, Huawei is the third-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, and the company is actually aiming to trump Apple and become the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in the next couple of years. Huawei is selling their devices globally, and it has been that way for quite some time now. LeEco, on the other hand, is trying to make a name for themselves outside of China, as they’ve entered the smartphone business back in April 2015, so they haven’t exactly been selling their devices for long. LeEco did, however, enter the US market a couple of months ago, as they’re trying to promote their brand in the west.
Huawei has been growing quite a bit in the last couple of years, they’ve managed to sell 140 million smartphones in 2016, which is considerably more than they managed to push out in 2015 (108 million). LeEco is not in the same ballpark as Huawei in terms of sales, but that was to be expected considering they haven’t been selling devices for long, but the company is growing. It will be interesting to see whether the companies will sort this matter out of the court, or will we see them battle it out in court after all, though the second scenario is far more likely, or at least it seems to be.