Robert Triggs / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A Huawei executive said Apple and Huawei would have been the only top players without US sanctions.
- The director dismissed Samsung as a “small” manufacturer in this scenario.
It’s been about four years huawei was subject to US sanctions, which caused the company to tumble from its number two status in the smartphone industry (but not before it briefly reached number one due to the pandemic). Now a senior Huawei executive has made some lofty claims about what could have been.
“If the US had not intervened and suppressed us, the largest mobile phone manufacturers in the world could be Huawei and Apple. I’m not very modest, and this may be the result of today,” said Richard Yu, CEO of the Huawei Consumer Business Group at a car forum in China (h/t: IT-home and MyDrivers†
However, where would this leave Samsung? Yu suggested that the manufacturer of the Galaxy phone would not be a factor.
Do you think Huawei would have beaten Samsung without the US ban?
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“Others are small manufacturers, including the Korean company (Samsung), which may be sold primarily in the US and South Korea markets,” Yu replied, according to a machine-translated excerpt.
It’s worth noting, of course, that Samsung was actually the top manufacturer in Q1 2019 (the last quarter before Huawei’s US ban), followed by Huawei and then Apple. In saying this, the Chinese brand reportedly enjoyed 50% annual growth at the time and publicly stated its goal of surpassing Samsung to take the top spot. But it’s certainly fair to say that Samsung was not a ‘small manufacturer’.
Do you think Huawei would have beaten Samsung and taken first place if US sanctions had not come into play? Let us know in the poll above.