Ren Zhengfei, the founder and CEO of Huawei, said on Tuesday that Huawei will survive sanctions imposed by Donald Trump and hopes to restore relations with the United States when new President Joe Biden takes office.
Joe Biden took over as White House chairman last month. Huawei now expects the new US president to improve relations between the two countries, as well as American and Chinese companies.
Ren Zhengfei said that Huawei remains committed to buying equipment from American companies and that restoring Huawei's access to American goods is mutually beneficial. He also suggested that restrictions on the Chinese tech giant would hurt American suppliers.
"We hope that the new US administration will have an open policy in favor of American companies and the economic development of the United States," Ren said. "We remain hopeful that we will be able to purchase large volumes of American materials, components and equipment so that we can all benefit from China's growth."
The company's leader also denied information that Huawei is withdrawing from smartphones.
"We have decided that we absolutely will not sell our consumer devices and smartphone business," he said.
The company will present the flagship folding smartphone Huawei Mate X2 on February 22; and the Huawei P50 is expected to be announced in March.
Huawei completely beat Apple in the Chinese phone market in 2020
According to CINNO Research and Canalys, Huawei continues to comfortably lead the Chinese smartphone market. According to the International Data Corporation's (IDC) quarterly mobile tracking report, China's smartphone market shipments in the fourth quarter of 2020 were approximately 86,4 million units, a slight increase of 0,3% year-on-year.
In the fourth quarter, Apple, OPPO, Vivo and Xiaomi saw significant increases in shipments. As for the specific ranking in the fourth quarter, Huawei, Apple, OPPO, Vivo and Xiaomi made the top five. Although Huawei fell by 34,5% compared to the previous year, it still holds the top spot with a share of 25,1%.
Looking at the whole of 2020, Huawei is still ahead of the competition. It has a 38,3% market share, down 0,1% from its 38,4% market share in 2019. In second place is Vivo with a 17,7% market share. This shows that Huawei in the first position has a market share that is 50% higher than the second position of Vivo. Oppo, Xiaomi and Apple occupy the third to fifth places, respectively. With the exception of Apple's year-over-year growth, the other four manufacturers are in varying degrees of decline.
In the fourth quarter, the shipment of Chinese 5G mobile phones was about 60 million units. In 2020, the cumulative shipments were about 167 million units, which was more than 50%.
