In a game of “could have, should have, should have”, Huawei CEO Richard Yu shared his opinion on the hypothetical state of the mobile market in 2022 if the United States had not imposed sanctions on Huawei. According to Mr. Yu, “If it were not for the intervention and repression of the United States [Huawei]the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturers could be Huawei and Apple.”
Moreover, shots were also fired in the direction of South Korea, as the CEO of Huawei lumped Samsung together with all the other rivals claiming the “Others are small manufacturers, including the Korean company (Samsung), which can be sold mainly in the American and South Korean markets.”
Calling Samsung a “small postman” certainly doesn’t ring true, as Huawei has spent years and years trying to catch up with the South Korea-based company. Once it effectively overtook Samsung, Huawei unfortunately fell due to the effects of the trade ban hitting hard.
As a reminder, Huawei was gradually rising to the top of the telephone market traditionally led by Samsung and Apple. In fact, it briefly overtook Samsung in the market in April 2020, a year after the infamous US trade ban came into effect. At the time, thanks to strong sales throughout mainland China, Huawei overtook Samsung by 2% in market share and accounted for 19% of all global phone sales, while Samsung’s share was 17% due to gloom Galaxy S20 series, all according to 2020 statistics from Counterpoint Research.
Admittedly, there’s no way of knowing how things would have turned out if the US hadn’t placed Huawei on the Entity List and essentially enforced its trade ban. Because of this, Huawei was unable to use Google’s Play Services framework, which removed one of the most vital aspects of a modern Android device. The entity listing also barred the company from working with any company operating in the United States, as well as receiving edge chips.
