display

The US government's sanctions have now fully impacted the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei.

As the market researchers IDC and Canalys unanimously report, Huawei slipped sharply in the Christmas quarter.

IDC reports a decline of more than 42 percent for Huawei in the months of October through December.

This would make Huawei only the fifth largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.

At Canalys, Huawei disappears completely from the list of the top 5. Here Apple leads in first place, followed by Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo.

Huawei can only be found there under "Other".

This is a deep fall for Huawei after the manufacturer was still - briefly - the world's largest smartphone manufacturer in the second quarter of last year.

But Huawei is now suffering twice from the US sanctions.

display

On the one hand, the company is no longer allowed to preinstall Google services on its smartphones.

However, many customers in Europe shy away from using alternatives for applications such as Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube and the Play Store.

On the other hand, Huawei is no longer getting supplies of its high-end processors because contract manufacturers are no longer allowed to sell them to Huawei under pressure from the US government.

Huawei's smartphone production has “no chips and no supplies,” said Richard Yu, head of the mobile division, back in August.

"Possibly the most difficult time for Huawei"

Because back in May, the USA had extended the trade restrictions to include suppliers of the manufacturer who produce with US technologies.

This also affects chip manufacturers who produce for Huawei, including TSMC from Taiwan, which stopped delivering in mid-September.

display

It is precisely in this situation that Huawei breaks the Chinese market, which has so far managed to compensate for the international weakness.

Huawei was by far the market leader here, not least because Chinese customers have no access to Google services anyway due to state censorship.

This applies equally to all manufacturers in China.

After a decline of almost 45 percent, Huawei is only slightly ahead of its competitor Oppo in China.

"It may be the toughest time for Huawei as it is preventing the manufacturer from even serving its home market," said Nicole Peng, analyst at Canalys.

The demand for Huawei devices in China is great.

But the manufacturer could not deliver.

And so other Chinese companies like Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi are now stepping into the breach.

"2021 will clearly be a year of aggressive expansion for Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi," says Canalys.

display

Huawei is now resorting to emergency sales.

In November, for example, the company announced the sale of its subsidiary Honor.

The Honor devices were booked in the statistics for Huawei in the fourth quarter.

Their share of Huawei's smartphone business has been estimated at a quarter to a third.

This means that the sales figures are likely to decline sharply again in the current quarter.

Huawei has still not announced any plans to launch flagship devices this year.

This means that the future for the P and Mate series smartphones is also unclear.

Just a few days ago, the Reuters news agency reported, with reference to two people familiar with the matter, that Huawei was negotiating the sale of these luxury smartphone brands.

Talks with Shanghai-based and government-backed investment firms are still in their infancy, it said.

Huawei has now responded to this.

“There is nothing wrong with these rumors,” it said in a statement.

“Huawei has no such plans.” They remain “fully committed” to the smartphone business and will continue to develop and deliver world-leading products and technologies for consumers around the world.

Here you can listen to our WELT podcasts

We use the player from the provider Podigee for our WELT podcasts.

We need your consent so that you can see the podcast player and to interact with or display content from Podigee and other social networks.

Activate social networks

I consent to content from social networks being displayed to me.

This allows personal data to be transmitted to third party providers.

This may require the storage of cookies on your device.

More information can be found here.

“Everything on shares” is the daily stock market shot from the WELT business editorial team.

Every morning from 7 a.m. with the financial journalists Moritz Seyffarth and Holger Zschäpitz.

For stock market experts and beginners.

Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music and Deezer.

Or directly via RSS feed.