Status Quo
US president Donald Trump’s verdict left everyone tongue-tied & furious when he proposed a trade ban on the Chinese giant Huawei. Soon after that, Google declared the revocation of Huawei’s Android license. This can be a huge dent in Huawei’s mobility ambitions as Android is the leading mobile operating system with over a million users.
This trade war could damage the fragile diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and China. Thousands of millions of people could be struck by US startled judgement. It’s not only traumatizing for Chinese but American companies and their jobs as well.
The Beginning
Huawei has been the benchmark in technology ever since they filed their first patent.In 1987, Ren Zhengfei started with phone switches, expanded with fixed-line network products, wireless GSM to CDMA and UMTS and grew up as the 2nd largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.
Huawei offers premium mobile phones with impressive designs with state of the art camera & visuals. Their mid-range brand Honor offers budget devices with great experience especially with the cameras and overall performance.
Other products like Huawei’s band, mobile broadband, tablets, computers & dongles are not less popular. Premium range and exceptional features enhanced the strong demand among the users.
The early vision of Huawei was to establish a domestic company and eradicate foreign telecommunications technology from China. After getting better response and consumer support, Huawei decided to expand its portfolio and venture into new territories.
It further gave birth to NarrowBand IOT which was considered a vital source of competition for rival companies. NB IOT is a major wireless carrier to enable a wide range of cellular devices and services. It emphasizes indoor coverage, long battery life and high connection density. Its channels can support huge numbers of endpoint devices over just 200 megahertz of spectrum.
Statistics show their total revenue in 2018 was US$108.5 billion which is 21% more than in 2017. In July 2010 Huawei stood out 72nd on the Fortune Global 500 list which was a great achievement.
Market share of Huawei in smartphones was 19 per cent in 2018. The persisting growth of Huawei is impressive. Honor’s market share in India has tripled in 2018, and is largely responsible for Huawei’s growth in the country,
The Recent Years
Huawei set foot in the US in collaboration with Symantec Corporation. The entity was incorporated as Huawei Symantec in 2007 and promised to provide network data storage and security solutions.
How Huawei tumbled down is not the story of a single day but it started early in 2003 when Cisco accused Huawei of intellectual property theft. Many other companies accused Huawei of stealing their technologies.
It was accused of violations of cybersecurity, US trade sanctions, copyrights and accusations of corporate espionage. Moreover, re-export of American trade secrets to Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan over the previous five years.
In early 2019 the US Department of Commerce announced cutting off all trade ties with Huawei calling it a risk to national security. Banning will not only affect software but hardware of Huawei handsets as well. The partner companies of Huawei like Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Intel too will be affected. These companies will not ship anything to Huawei in the later period and this will affect its revenue.
Should all the Huawei users be perplexed for the future?
A sundry question coming into the mind of users. Will they lose access to the Android OS and Google Play Store? And does it really mean they will not get a hold of Google’s entire suite of apps: Chrome, Gmail, Maps, YouTube & Drive?
So it will not affect existing users. However, they might not be able to update their software and this is a serious problem too.
However, Huawei has an agenda to develop its own operating system, apps and services and will continue to provide security updates for existing users.
The Future
It’s a giant turmoil for Huawei but CEO Ren Zhengfei seems quite calm in handling it. Huawei is ready to launch new devices like the Maimang 8, P30 Pro in the market. Huawei started spreading its wings by launching a new model of smartphones in other countries like Brazil & India.
Huawei already secured its role because reports say that Russia will provide the Aurora operating system in complete replacement for Android. Huawei will provide a 5G network for Russia’s biggest carrier.
He seems unflinched with this whole saga. Believers of Huawei can take solace in what he said in an interview, Zhengfei responded, “ We will continue to build a safe and sustainable software ecosystem, in order to provide the best experience for all the users globally.”
