Huawei's Dream About Smartphone Supremacy

choi

Scott Cendrowski, Is the World Big Enough for Huawei?  After climbing to the top of the smartphone market in its home country, the Chinese giant is taking off in Europe. But to challenge Apple and Samsung, the world's No 3 phonemaker needs to figure out how to reach American consumers -- or how to live without them. Fortune, Feb 1, 2017.
http://fortune.com/huawei-china-smartphone/

Quote:

"Enter Huawei—probably the most viable contender yet to loosen the giants' [Apple's  and Samsung's] grip [on smartphones]. It's [Huawei's] a 170,000-employee company with $61 billion in sales, selling telecom equipment in 170 countries. Since 2014 it has been No 1 globally in sales of the networking equipment that underpins telecommunication systems, taking the crown from Sweden's Ericsson. And now its goal is to dominate the market for the phones themselves.

"The result: skyrocketing growth. In 2015, Huawei sold 108 million phones, ranking third worldwide. For 2016, it estimates that its shipments jumped 30%, to 140 million, and its phone revenue an estimated 40%, to 178 billion yuan ($26.5 billion), while the industry grew only by single digits globally.

"it [Huawei] win ­networking-equipment deals with major carriers in Europe. Now Huawei is selling its newest devices [smartphones] for those same networks in Europe, where it doubled its smartphone market share in the first nine months of 2016, to 12%. Huawei is the top smartphone seller in Portugal and the Netherlands and the second biggest in Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Spain.  In China, the world's biggest country for smartphone sales pin both volume (ie, number) and value], the fight for leadership resembles a game of king of the hill among closely matched domestic companies

"Geopolitical tensions have kept Huawei from selling network equipment in the [United] States, which in turn has made the brand a stranger to American wireless carriers. Not coincidentally, Huawei smartphones are a virtual nonentity in the US, capturing less than 0.4% of the market.  Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei has talked about breaking into the US time and again, former employees say. * * * But Huawei's efforts so far have come up empty—and even the company doesn't see that changing soon.

My comment:
(a) King of the Hill (game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_the_Hill_(game)
(b) The article is long, so you may want to forgo the second half. (quotations above summarize the first half.) I simply do not see Huawei smartphones penetrates US, Australia, Taiwan etc (India has restricted to 100% domestic equipment since 2013), where Huawei network equipment is barred (by respective governments).