In 2019 Huawei sold 240 million mobile phones. They are expected to manufacture about 80 million in 2021. The veto of the United States in its trade war with China has been settled with a real disaster for its smartphone division, and now it remains to know what the future of the company is in this difficult situation.
The truth is that the company has been moving a tab for some time, and in addition to the sale of Honor or the launch of Harmony OS to avoid depending on Google, they are turning to other services and products. The question is if that will be enough.
We talk about all this in our episode today of Despeja la X, the weekly Xataka podcast that this time brings together Javier Lacort (@jlacort), Xataka editor, already a server, Javier Pastor (@javipas), also editor in this house. The production is as always in charge of Saints Araújo (@santiaraujo).
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¿Wilcox Huawei?
Everything was going smoothly for a Huawei that was destroying the competition in the mobility sector. In 2019 and part of 2020 the company boasted a 20% market share, but today it is in the middle and it does not stop plummeting.
The reason, of course, is the veto that the United States imposed on the company as part of its trade war with China. That veto prevented Huawei from using electronic components from US manufacturers, but mostly prohibited the use of Google services and applications in its terminals, something that has been a decisive factor. It was hoped that with Biden as the new US president the situation could change, but it has not.
Huawei has certainly tried to react. It continues to take out splendid mobiles in many sections – and if not, pay attention to the photographic comparison of 2021 – but the absence of those services and applications means that many potential buyers end up looking the other way.
The firm has been turning and proposing solutions and plans B. For example, the development of Harmony OS, which is beginning to reach some of its mobiles but which will also be on televisions and even in cars. The firm is also betting heavily on the world of wearables (the Huawei Band 6 has just come out), home automation or Mesh connectivity, but there are other ways to compensate for the losses generated by the macha of the mobile division.
Precisely one of them is in the cloud. Huawei is launching more and more services in this area and is pursuing an increasingly focused strategy of leveraging its resources to follow the steps that have already brought enormous success to Microsoft.
The IoT is also another option for the future, but as we explained in the final part of the podcast, this will be an important year for a Huawei that must face the costs of a giant structure that previously sold 240 million mobiles a year and that now will sell (hopefully) a third.
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And remember: every Thursday you have a new chapter of our podcast Clear the X, in which we thoroughly analyze the great technological topic of each week.
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