AT&T could be the first US carrier to offer a Huawei flagship in 2018
Huawei has made some big strides in penetrating the US market, but that all-important slot on a carrier’s store shelves has been out of reach. That may change soon, though, as The Information reports that Huawei is expected to launch a flagship device with AT&T at some point in 2018. It’d be the first time for a Huawei-branded flagship smartphone.
Huawei is no stranger to the mobile market, with the company’s work over the years being important in helping wireless technology move forward. Their history includes important work in network infrastructure and technology, but it also includes making a boatload of non-branded phones for companies needing a cheap flock of devices to sell. You may have owned a Huawei phone at some point and never even known it.
Fast forward to today, and it’d be hard not to know if you own one. Huawei has increasingly improved their branding efforts and have risen to become a top name in the smartphone market, and is looking to increase that gain exponentially through the spawn of their Honor sub-brand. Their phones are no longer ugly and dull, but beautiful and feature rich. And even their biggest contemporary issues — that being buggy, incohesive software — have been dutifully addressed.
That new outlook is what helped the company start to create a foothold in the US market where it can be hard for anyone other than LG, Samsung, and Apple to make any decent dent. It started with online sales of unlocked phones through Honor, and spread to brick and mortar by way of places like Best Buy.
Will an AT&T launch help take Huawei from being the biggest player in China to the biggest player in the world? Doubtful, but everyone has to start somewhere, and history shows AT&T is a pretty good place to start.