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Signs point to HUAWEI giving up on America
- A source close to the matter says that HUAWEI is giving up the fight to get HUAWEI in America.
- HUAWEI laid off five American employees, one of whom was solely in charge of Washington lobbying efforts on behalf of the company.
- It may be a long, long time before we see HUAWEI in America if the company isn’t that interested in fighting for it anymore.
Huawei, the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer behind only Samsung and Apple, knows that to become number one it must have an American presence. But with allegations that the company is secretly run by the Chinese government, and worries that Chinese companies might soon have too much sway over the world’s technology, breaking America has been an uphill climb.
Now, with the failure of the AT&T exclusive deal and the increasing likelihood that HUAWEI telecom products will end up being unaffordable to American companies, it seems that HUAWEI is giving up on its American dreams altogether.
Today, via The New York Times, a source close to the matter reported that HUAWEI has laid off five American employees, including lobbyist William B. Plummer. Mr. Plummer was the vice president of external affairs at HUAWEI and with the company for eight years. He was the most senior member of HUAWEI’s American policy team who is not a Chinese citizen.
According to the anonymous source, it is not clear if HUAWEI plans to replace Mr. Plummer. But, for now anyway, Plummer’s dismissal means HUAWEI won’t have any current lobbying efforts in the U.S. With so much stacked against the company when it comes to getting a foothold in the country, the fact that it will not have a Washington representative points to the company merely walking away from the U.S.
HUAWEI is currently in the middle of its global analyst summit where it lays out plans for the following year. At the summit, executives emphasized growth opportunities in Europe and Asia, and described diversification plans that will put HUAWEI products into organizations of all kinds, like factories, governments, and police.
So far, there hasn’t been any significant discussion of what the company plans to do in America in 2019.
However hard the United States pushes back against HUAWEI, it won’t likely stop the company’s rapid growth in the rest of the world. The recently released P20 line of smartphones is already earning rave reviews, and the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro was Android Authority’s smartphone of the year for 2017.
NEXT: We asked, you told us: HUAWEI P20 Pro vs. Samsung Galaxy S9