A couple of days back, we reported that Huawei’s CEO Richard Yu believed Huawei could have been the world’s largest smartphone marker, surpassing Samsung in 2019, if not for the U.S. ban. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility of Huawei becoming world’s no.1 even with the ban in place.
Huawei’s CEO and founder, Ren Zhengfei said in an interview with CNN that Huawei can become the world’s no.1 smartphone maker even without Google. When asked whether the company had a backup plan, Ren said that Huawei is working on a large scale solution to tackle this situation. He was likely referring to the company’s own HarmonyOS platform that was announced back in August in China.
He also said that he doesn’t know whether Google was ‘definitively ‘denied a license to trade with Huawei. This response comes at a time when some companies have been granted a license to trade with the telecommunications giant. For example, Microsoft recently got a license to export software to Huawei by the U.S. commerce department. Thanks to the trade license, Microsoft could supply Windows 10 to Huawei’s new MateBook D notebooks in China.
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However, the real question in our minds is whether Google will ever receive a license to trade with Huawei. It’s been six months since the U.S. ban came into effect and newly launched Huawei smartphones do not feature Google apps which have become more or less essential for international users. And without Google, Huawei smartphones are basically dead on arrival in the international markets.
But today’s comment reveals that Ren is pretty optimistic about Huawei’s comeback. He added in the interview that it was a matter of waiting for some time until Huawei got back into the international markets. According to Ren, Huawei will make a comeback in the next two years.
“We will have to resort to alternatives. If those alternatives become mature, I think it’ll become less likely to switch back to previous versions,” added Ren at the interview “It is a critical moment for all of us, I hope the US government can consider what’s best for American companies.”
While we still don’t know what Huawei is planning for the international markets without Google, it’s current strategy has been to double down its efforts in China. And thanks to the sales boosts in its home market, the company is doing better than most other smartphone companies on a global scale.
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(Source)
