Here’s why Huawei has yet to make a big splash in the US
Huawei has obviously been trying to crack into the US market for some time now. Their biggest attempt to date has come in the form of sub-brand Honor offering direct-to-consumer sales of value-positioned smartphones, including the all new Honor 6X.
As the company prepares for a widespread launch of their brand new Huawei P10 across Canada, it spawned the question: why aren’t they doing the same in the US, who are neighbors just to the south?
According to MobileSyrup, it comes down to carrier relationships. It seems the major carriers in the US don’t really respond well to Huawei’s brand, preferring instead to go with LG, Samsung, and HTC for most of their business. Hell, even ZTE gets more play.
Perhaps it’s just a matter of luck. The aforementioned manufacturers planted their seeds in the US very early. This was especially necessary throughout the period of AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity where Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile all yearned for their own alternatives in absence of the real deal.
That’s not to mention the relationships these companies enjoyed long before these new-age smartphones arrived. HTC was the primary player for Windows phones, while Motorola, LG, and Samsung were still tops in the feature phone department.
Looking at it from Huawei’s perspective, they are attempting to break into a market and unfurl decades of the status quo in the few short years they’ve actually tried. It won’t be that easy, so all they can do is take what’s given to them and hope they can keep building their brand to a point where carriers will have no choice but to do business with them. That, or pull an Apple and introduce a product so compelling that it causes a massive shift in the market (spoiler: probably won’t happen anytime soon).
Ultimately, the fate rests on the shoulders of consumers. If Huawei’s phones were in great demand, the carriers would have a good reason to push them as hard as they can, but the fact of the matter is their profits and new smartphone additions are steadily climbing year-to-year without Huawei’s help, so it’s on Huawei to make something that’ll change that.