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Huawei and the US Wireless Industry have never really gotten on, sure there’s a slew of low-end handsets from Huawei to be found on carriers here but, the US hasn’t been ready to let them in just yet. Add that to comments late last year of Huawei throwing in the towel and simply walking away from the US market and you’ve got a fairly interesting little saga brewing here. Just when it looked like Huawei were all but done with the US Market, it seems that the company is ready to come back, or was it that they never left? We’re not sure, the whole thing is a little confusing. Anyway, as you might know, Huawei are at this year’s CES event touting their latest. The follow-up to last year’s Ascend Mate, the Huawei Ascend Mate 2 4G is just as large and features much the same performance and features but this time around it features 4G LTE speeds.
So, even though their latest and greatest is apparently coming to the US, we thought that Huawei was done with the US? That they had given up on us? Well, Fiercewireless is reporting that might not be the case and that Huawei have refocused their efforts. William Plummer, head of external affairs for Huawei has been talking to Fiercewireless and has said that to introduce devices into the US market, they need to work with carriers, in the traditional way, as well as focusing on the unlocked channels to get their devices on sale. Basically, the consensus from Plummer is that Huawei “need to populate 4G LTE devices into the [US] marketplace” and we’re inclined to agree with him.
There was a time when Huawei, along with ZTE was looked upon by the US government as threats to national security, due to their potential to “listen in”, which now seems awfully ironic considering that the NSA have been proven to have undertaken extremely invasive supervision on the entire US population. So, it would seem that Huawei feel like their chances of entering the US market are much better than they were in 2013. There’s no reason why – in our eyes – that Huawei shouldn’t start selling devices in the US, they’re one of the largest phone manufacturers in the world, right up there with Samsung and, as the past has taught, competition is good. With another big player in the US, it would push stalwarts like Samsung, Apple and HTC to innovate more to climb back up the ladder. It’s not impossible to strike a deal with a US carrier from the outside, either. Sony proved that with the recent announcement of the Xperia Z1s at this year’s CES, which is a device that’s been available for some time in Europe but, is now making its way to T-Mobile.