14 DAY TRIAL // The smartphone market is becoming a lot more difficult for Huawei, as the United States sanctions are making it harder for the company to launch new products.
More specifically, the ban that the U.S. government has recently announced, and which blocks non-American companies from selling products to Huawei if they use technology coming from the United States, will soon represent the chip collaboration between the Chinese firm and Samsung.
In other words, because of the new restrictions that will come into effect on September 15, Samsung and SK Hynix, two of the companies that currently supply chips to Huawei, would no longer be allowed to do it going forward.
So it’ll obviously be harder for Huawei to build new products, as more and more partners are now blocked from supplying components. On the other hand, it’s believed that Huawei has tried to create stocks of the components it would no longer be able to supply after September 15, so it’d still be able to launch new devices after the new sanctions come into effect.
Of course, this is just a limited solution, as Huawei would sooner or later run out of components, at which point it needs to find another way to source the parts it would need for its products.
The HarmonyOS push
Huawei is also getting ready to replace Android with its very own mobile operating system called HarmonyOS. The company has recently confirmed that the very first models powered by HarmonyOS would launch in early 2020.
Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how HarmonyOS would perform in international markets, especially as everybody sees the lack of Android and Google services a major drawback.
Huawei itself estimates a massive drop in global shipments, so the company has recently reduced component orders for its flagship models, most likely because it expects sales to be affected by the U.S. sanctions.