Victim of the Cold War America / China – Huawei Refuses To Admit Defeat in Smartphones
The Chinese firm launches the P50 Pro and the P50 Pocket internationally.
During 2018, everything seemed to be going well for Huawei as it slowly but surely moved closer to its ultimate goal of becoming the world's top smartphone seller. Huawei had already surpassed Apple in volumes, not profits of course, and the next target was Samsung.
Everything indicated that Huawei would eventually overtake the South Korean giant, which has dominated the Android smartphone market outrageously since the early 2010s. Samsung is always rewarded for being among the first to embrace the Android mobile system developed by Google.
And then Donald Trump came along. Donald Trump has launched America into a trade war with China, of which Huawei is proving to be one of the main collateral victims in the technology field. Huawei is even the symbol of this cold war that America and China are now fighting.
The arrival of Joe Biden in the White House at the beginning of 2021 has not changed anything, since it is clear that the total confrontation against China is the only subject that goes beyond partisan quarrels in America. Republicans and Democrats agree on nothing, except that China is the great enemy to be fought in the years to come.
Despite the ban by America, Huawei launches the P50 Pro and P50 Pocket to continue to exist internationally
Since the beginning of this trade war, Huawei has been banned from offering Google services on its devices. No YouTube or Gmail, but above all no access to the Google Play Store which offers more than 2.5 million applications and games to download to fully enjoy your smartphone. Needless to say, despite what Huawei's executives may have said on several occasions, this is a huge blow that explains why Huawei's market share has never stopped falling since this ban.
The quality of Huawei's smartphones is not in question, far from it. But without access to Google services, many users refuse to buy Huawei devices. Samsung is rubbing its hands, as well as other manufacturers like Xiaomi, another Chinese brand though!
To survive, Huawei wants to remain present in the minds of consumers. The Chinese group has decided to launch its latest high-end smartphones on the international markets at the end of January 2022. These are the Huawei P50 Pro and the Huawei P50 Pocket. The latter is Huawei's first foldable device in the direction of the height, on the model of Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip, a format that is beginning to resonate with the general public.
Available in China since the summer, the latest in Huawei's prestigious P range were not sure to be exported because of the American sanctions that weigh on the Chinese group since 2019. These sanctions forced Huawei to make concessions of importance as I just explained.
The P50 Pro and P50 Pocket suffer from two major flaws, and the most serious of them is not the absence of Google services
The P50 range marketed in Europe by Huawei will not even use Android, but rather an operating system derived from its open-source version, called “EMUI 12”. Contrary to what was decided in China, Huawei did not choose to switch its devices to its OS, Harmony OS. The goal here was probably not to destabilize international consumers too much.
The fact that they already have to do without YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, but especially the Play Store is confusing enough, without having to add more. Huawei is trying to keep its head above water by developing alternative services, such as its app store called AppGallery. However, don't expect miracles, because, despite Huawei's incentives, very few developers are interested in porting their applications to the Chinese giant's store.
The two high-end smartphones launched at the beginning of 2022 by Huawei suffer from another major problem: neither of these two smartphones is equipped with a 5G chip. Prevented from making its mobile processors (the famous Kirin chips that equipped the home devices since the mid-2010s), Huawei resorts to components from the American Qualcomm equipped with a 4G modem. Now, since the fall of 2021, more than half of the phones sold in Europe are compatible with the latest mobile technology.
At the high end of the market, above $700, the proportion exceeds 98%. How many users will be willing to spend between $1,200 and $1,500 on the P50 Pro and P50 Pocket when they still only have 4G, plus the fact that they don't have access to Google services?
Huawei focuses on its technological strengths, but that won't be enough
This is a huge problem for Huawei, which is trying to focus on other areas where it can excel. So this concerns the battery, the interface, the design, and especially the photo. To convince customers, Huawei relies more than ever on the excellence of its P range in photography. It is this strong point that had allowed the second half of the 2010s to Huawei to experience significant success before the trade war initiated by Donald Trump abruptly interrupted this momentum.
The historic partnership with the German company Leica is still active. The technological know-how of the Shenzhen-based group is also still evident in the characteristics of the batteries or the careful design of its products. I find it hard to believe that this will be enough. Huawei has abruptly fallen from its pedestal, after becoming a short-lived world number one in the summer of 2020 by overtaking Samsung. But nothing sustainable given the current situation.
Huawei's market share of over 20% has been divided by ten. Huawei is now only the eleventh largest manufacturer in the world, while its compatriots Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo now thrive on its ashes. Even in China, until now an unwavering bastion of the brand, the American sanctions have finally reached it. It now controls only 7% of the market, compared to nearly a third in 2020 ... And the crown of number one sales in China has just fallen, for the first time in six years, to the American Apple.
If Huawei does not give up in the field of smartphones, the brand must still expect difficult months and years in the short and medium-term. The P50 Pro and P50 Pocket will not change this, even if their technological quality is not questioned here.
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