Huawei has no plans to exit the stateside market and will continue operating in the United States even after Washington effectively blocked all of its major growth opportunities in the country, according to Richard Yu, Chief Executive Officer of the company’s electronics division. In a recent email to CNET, Mr. Yu said the tech giant remains committed “to earning the trust of U.S. consumers,” having added that it “would never compromise that trust.” The comments come shortly after Huawei disclosed its consolidated financial report for the last fiscal year, revealing record profits but also a decline in the performance of its North and South America operations.
While the company largely attributed that trend to a decrease in network spending in Latin America, the fact that it was essentially blocked from doing large-scale business in the U.S. may have also resulted in the decline of its North America results, many industry watchers believe. The Shenzhen-based original equipment manufacturer was previously said to have been negotiating smartphone retail partnerships with AT&T and Verizon but both ended up dropping that idea following pressure from Washington, according to previous reports. AT&T’s exit is understood to have been a particularly large blow to the company’s stateside ambitions as a deal with the second largest wireless carrier in the country was already agreed and was supposed to be announced at Las Vegas-based CES approximately 24 hours after the company canceled the tie-up, insiders said several months back.
Earlier this week, Huawei announced the P20 and P20 Pro, its most powerful Android flagships to date that some industry watchers already claim boast the best mobile cameras ever created. Neither device will be sold in the U.S. and the same lack of stateside availability also applies to the newly unveiled Porsche Design Mate RS, Huawei confirmed. Multiple U.S. regulators and intelligence chiefs previously accused the company of posing a security risk due to its close ties to Beijing, with Huawei repeatedly dismissing those allegations. Mr. Yu also called such accusations “groundless” in his Friday email to CNET, having asserted the entire situation is “quite frankly unfair” and called for an open debate on the matter “based on facts.”