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Will Huawei ever make phones for the U.S. again?
Raj asks:
Huawei used to make some good phones before they were banned in the United States. Will that ban ever be lifted, and if so, will Huawei return?
Thank you
Hi Raj, and thanks for mailing in with a great question. Huawei still makes great products even without being officially Android-based. While the U.S. ban financially hurt them, the company should be around for a while, as it's very popular in China and other places.
A quick answer is to never say never, but I can't see Huawei's ban being lifted any time soon, and without a major shift in what all the company manufacturers. The ban wasn't about phones or protecting consumers from Huawei's products; it was all about money and market "power".
Why did Huawei get banned?
Officially, Huawei was found to be working with the Chinese state and a security threat to the United States. Without knowing everything that was found and investigated, it's impossible to know how much of that is true, but it doesn't really matter because U.S. interests (public and private) would have just found another reason. Huawei needed to leave the market, and the faster the better.
It's about those little symbols at the top of your phone: 5G. In the U.S., Huawei's phones weren't any better than others when it came to 5G connectivity, but Huawei makes more than phones. A lot more.
No, I don't mean watches or tablets. I mean "heavy" network gear and switches that telecom companies need. In particular, Huawei was able to make network equipment that worked as well as anyone else could build and sell it cheaper. When that happened, companies like AT&T or Verizon, as well as more industrial companies we've never heard of, started to buy it.
The U.S. is weird when it comes to a "monopoly" in the market. Some politicians think one should never exist, some think only the companies they like should be able to dominate a market, but almost all of them feel that if there is going to be one, it can't be a company from China or with ties to the Chinese government.
Huawei is both, and the fears that it was state-sponsored before the ban may or may not have been true, but they are now. The very same thing would happen here in the U.S. if China banned a company with a high market share: the government would do whatever it takes to save it.
You can still buy a Huawei product in the U.S. from a reseller, but the hardware and the software are not going to work as designed, there will be no warranty, and it might not work at all. I'd advise against it.
About coming back
Huawei has thrived despite being banned in the U.S. The company still sells plenty of phones and other mobile products, but it's also a leader when it comes to (you guessed it) AI. If Huawei ever wanted to do business here or with American companies without restrictions, a lot would have to change.
I don't think Huawei would be willing (or should be willing) to step backwards so it can sell more phones in the land of rampant consumerism. It should continue to build out a portfolio of products, services, and mobile offerings without caring what the U.S. government thinks about it. With the company further entrenched with the Chinese government and having expanded into the field of AI hardware, technology, and research, everything the "right" people did not like about Huawei is now even "worse" than it was when the ban was placed.
There is nothing wrong with the company striving to be an example of Chinese national pride, the same way Ford or General Motors once was in the U.S. Of course, I'm not privy to any information that would prove me wrong and have no say in the matter, so I'm going with it.
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