Huawei has been looking to make in-roads into the US for quite a few years now, but keep getting turned away. This year, Huawei lost out on contracts with AT&T and Verizon, and now Best Buy is discontinuing sales of its products. A real blow to Huawei. But Huawei isn’t staying complacent, instead it is looking to continue growing in Europe. Another market where Huawei isn’t that large, and does have plenty of room to grow.
Huawei’s annual analyst summit in Shenzhen happened this week, and the company’s vice president of consumer business group’s handsets strategy, Changzhu Li, stated that the US had “locked the door” on Huawei. When asked about why so many companies are looking to enter the US, Li stated it’s “huge, it’s the perfect market for all the smartphone vendors.” Li continued by stating that “that’s why, in the past years, we have invested a lot of effort to communicate with operators, distributors and partners. I think this effort will go on, but some factors we can’t control.” The US hasn’t been to kind to Huawei, but with the Trump Administration, Huawei has been getting further pushed out of the market. President Trump isn’t just targeting Huawei though, he also signed an executive order that blocked Broadcom from purchasing Qualcomm earlier this year.
Focusing on Europe is key for Huawei. The company already holds around 15 to 20-percent market share on the continent. Li also said at the analyst summit that Italy and Spain are big growth areas for the company, and Huawei already ships more smartphones than Apple – Huawei is the third largest smartphone maker in the world right now. Li said about Europe that “the recognition from this market is very important for us.” This is because it is a high-end market “considering the GDP, considering the culture.” Huawei announced the P20 lineup of smartphones in Paris last month, which is a favorite of the company’s CEO, Richard Yu. Yu is a big fan of Paris, which is why the event was held there. But that’s not the entire reason behind launching the P20 in Paris. It’s also to help Huawei boost its presence in Europe and pick up more customers.