14 DAY TRIAL // Huawei is still struggling to deal with the sanctions that the United States government has announced last year (and which has seen been expanded to more operations), and now a top mobile analyst believes all these struggles could have a devastating effect on the Chinese tech giant.
TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is known as one of the super-reliable sources of information for unreleased Apple products, says Huawei will almost certainly be hit by the sanctions in the United States.
And while a decline in market share is something that seems impossible to avoid right now, Kuo goes as far as predicting the worst for Huawei: if the Chinese firm doesn’t find a way to get around the United States ban or if the sanctions aren’t lifted, it could very well exit the smartphone market.
No word on sanctions being lifted
While this is very unlikely to happen, especially since China continues to be Huawei’s main engine, there’s no doubt the company needs international markets to work too. And with the United States blocking it from working with American firms and using their products, Huawei is forced to look for alternatives that don’t necessarily help maintain the same market performance.
The first sanctions were announced by the U.S. government in mid-May 2019 when Huawei was officially blocked from working with American companies and using their products. These involved Google’s Android, which essentially meant that Huawei couldn’t install the operating system on its mobile devices.
Since then, Huawei invested aggressively in alternatives, including building its very own mobile operating system. However, Huawei itself knows that offering Google services on its smartphones is something critical for its lineup of devices, so company officials said on several occasions they hope the sanctions would be lifted by the U.S. government rather sooner than later.