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HUAWEI says it can sell 20 million Mate 30 phones even without Google's help
HUAWEI has finally taken the covers off of the Mate 30 series, with no Google apps and services on board. Instead, Mate 30 users will need to use the HUAWEI App Gallery and the HUAWEI Mobile Services (HMS) Core suite due to the US trade ban against the Chinese firm.
Despite this challenge, HUAWEI has told Android Authority that it hopes to ship up to 20 million Mate 30 series devices, mostly on the back of Chinese sales.
Speaking to Android Authority at the Mate 30 launch, Yu said: “I think this ban will influence our out of China sales. But China sales will increase a lot because this is the most competitive 5G flagship in the world.” He believes that the China market will continue to grow strongly, but expects a drop in sales globally.
Since the May ban our sales dropped, but now it’s recovering really really quickly, so consumers love our products. I do believe that we can sell more than 20 million with the Mate 30 series.
HUAWEI Mate 30 and the Chinese connection
When the US-China trade tensions ramped up earlier this year, HUAWEI had to move a lot of its resources back to China and set up more distribution channels in the country, according to the IDC. This helped the company improve its sales in the region, reportedly shipping an all-time high of 36.4 million units in the last quarter.
Now, HUAWEI’s consumer business group CEO Richard Yu is once again banking on China to make the Mate 30 series a success.
Yu might not be wrong about the company’s growth in China. Even after the US ban, HUAWEI’s Q2 smartphone sales in China shot up by 31%, according to market research firm Canalys. In fact, the company has the highest market share in the country for any vendor in the past eight years. These Chinese shipment figures contrasted with a slight decline in HUAWEI’s global smartphone shipment volumes in Q2 2019. But is the 20 million sales number for the Mate 30 a stretch?
From what the numbers say, HUAWEI hasn’t really suffered much because of the US ban until now. At its Mate 30 launch event, the company announced that it shipped more than 17 million P30 series phones and more than 16 million Mate 20 series devices. But the big difference is that the P30 series and Mate 20 phones included Google services.
Fighting the US ban
While there’s no end in sight for HUAWEI’s troubles with the US, Yu hopes that the company will be able to rollout Google apps and services to the Mate 30 series of devices overnight once the ban is lifted. So there is some hope for potential Mate 30 buyers after all.
The HUAWEI consumer group CEO also hopes to continue selling the Mate 30 through carriers in various markets. Even though the company can’t sell the phones in the US right now, Yu said that the new series will be heading to Europe and China next month. Mate 30 phones will also be launched in Asia Pacific, Middle East and other countries, the executive confirmed.
“We cannot stop our business, we will continue selling,” Yu said.
How ever positive the HUAWEI executive sounds, we will have to wait and watch how the scenario plays out. For now, it’s too early to say if the Mate 30 series can succeed solely on the basis of patriotic demand in China. One thing is for sure though, HUAWEI is in for some nasty news as far as its immediate Mate 30 sales outside of China are concerned.