Huawei CEO: without a US trade ban, we and Apple were the biggest

A Huawei executive has said that the Chinese company could become one of the two largest smartphone manufacturers in the world along with Apple. According to the man, this is not the case because of the US trade ban that was issued in 2019.

“If the US didn’t step in and suppress us, Huawei and Apple could be the biggest smartphone manufacturers in the world,” said Yu Chengdong. according to the Chinese ITHome during a car show in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The man also referred to competitor Samsung and reportedly said that the South Korean company is a smaller player because it mainly sells its devices in the United States and South Korea. Chengdong also said that Huawei can only sell devices with 4G connectivity for the time being due to the US trade ban. Huawei introduced the P50 Pro and foldable P50 Pocket in the Netherlands at the beginning of this year, two devices without 5g.

In May 2019, the US government imposed a trade ban on the Chinese company and seventy other companies linked to Huawei. This put the company on the entity list. Then-US President Donald Trump believed that Huawei could pose a threat to US national security, partly because it supplied equipment for 5G networks in the US and allowed Huawei to take a strategically strong position.

The trade ban makes it impossible for American companies to do business with Huawei, but the US government has meanwhile issued licenses to companies to continue doing business with Huawei. For example, Microsoft received a license to continue to provide Windows for computers. Google has not yet received a license and was forced to withdraw the Android license from the Chinese manufacturer. As a result, Huawei devices have been supplied without Google services since 2019. In 2021, Huawei recorded half the turnover from the sale of consumer hardware. The company managed to achieve a profit of almost 91 billion euros.