Chinese tech companies have been hit hard by the policies of former US President Donald Trump. There have been speculations that things will improve slightly under new President Joe Biden, but this is not the case.
The Biden administration, in collaboration with allies, will add “new targeted sanctions” to the export of some important technologies to China, sources say. This happened before Joe Biden’s first call to the President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping.
Aside from adding new trade restrictions on sensitive technologies, the United States will not agree to cancel Chinese trade tariffs imposed by the Trump administration until it has thoroughly discussed with allies.
“President Biden’s major criticism of the Trump strategy here was not that he wasn’t getting tough on China on trade, but that he was doing so alone, while also fighting our allies.”
It was also stated that Joe Biden is committed to working with Republicans to increase public investment in technology sectors that are critical to the economic advantage of the United States, including semiconductors, biotechnology and artificial intelligence.
Huawei: We will never sell our smartphone business
Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, said on Tuesday that Huawei will survive the sanctions imposed by Donald Trump and look forward to a renewed relationship with the United States when new President Joe Biden comes to power.
Joe Biden took over as head of the White House 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 Huawei remains determined to buy equipment from US companies; and that restoring Huawei’s access to US goods is mutually beneficial. In addition, he suggests that the restrictions on the Chinese tech giant will hurt US suppliers.
“We hope the new US administration would have an open policy for the benefit of American firms and the economic development of the United States,” said Ren. “We still hope that we can buy large volumes of American materials, components, and equipment so that we can all benefit from China’s growth.”
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The leader of the company also denied information that Huawei is going out of the smartphone business.
“We have decided we absolutely will not sell off our consumer devices, our smartphone business,” he said.
The company will unveil the flagship foldable smartphone Huawei Mate X2 on February 22nd; and the Huawei P50 is expected to be announced in March.
Huawei completely defeats Apple in the Chinese phone market in 2020
According to CINNO Research and Canalys, Huawei still comfortably leads the Chinese smartphone market. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) mobile phone quarterly 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, shipments of Apple, OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi all increased significantly. In terms of specific rankings in the fourth quarter, Huawei, Apple, OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi ranked in the top five. Although Huawei fell 34.5% year-on-year, it still ranks first with a 25.1% share.
Looking at the entire 2020, Huawei is still miles ahead of the competition. It has a 38.3% market share which is a 0.1% decrease from its 38.4% market share of 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 over 50% higher than second-place Vivo. Oppo, Xiaomi, and Apple rank third to fifth respectively. Except for Apple’s year-on-year growth, the other four manufacturers all have different degrees of decline.
In the fourth quarter, the Chinese 5G mobile phone shipments were about 60 million units. In 2020, the cumulative shipments were about 167 million units, accounting for more than 50%.