Even if President Trump is gone, the rivalry between the United States and China continues. The company at the forefront is Huawei Technology (Huawei), the Chinese communications equipment and terminal giant. From the latest accounts, we can see that despite suffering from severe US sanctions, we still fight tenaciously without breaking the sumo table. Kangtai Takaguchi, a journalist familiar with China's economy and society, explained.
* * on March 31, Huawei announced its 2020 results. Sanctions began in May 2019, the US Google developed smartphone operating system (basic software) Android (Android) can not be used, unable to allow overseas factories to make their own semiconductor components, some parts supply is banned and other besieged conditions, but showed "stickiness" in the not-so-good final accounts.
Sales were 891.4 billion yuan (about 15 trillion yen), up 3.8 per cent from a year earlier. This has undoubtedly slowed down significantly given that it continues to grow by nearly 20 per cent a year, but it is surprising given that the forecast is negative.
"stay away from Huawei" to accelerate
Huawei has three major businesses: phone company divisions such as base station equipment, corporate divisions such as servers and switches, and consumer divisions such as smartphones, tablets, personal computers and wearable devices.
The head of making money is the consumer sector. Smartphones have become the driving force, and sales in the consumer sector have grown more than 15-fold in the decade since 2010. South Korea's Samsung, the world's third-largest manufacturer after Apple of the United States, is in a tough position because of U. S. sanctions. Because if Google's Android can't be loaded, it can't be sold in overseas markets.
I got the Huawei smartphone "P40 Pro 5G" that went on sale last spring. Even though I am not dissatisfied with the hardware features such as camera and processing speed, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar. It is too inconvenient to leave everything in your life to Mr. Google. After all, it's a secondary plane now.
In China, Google-like services are not available through online censorship. So there is no problem for the average Chinese, but there are other problems. Because of heightened sanctions, the independently developed SoC, the core component of a smartphone that brings together chips, processors and sensors on the system, was finally unable to be made last September. Cash stuff, "Huawei supports!" Don't lose to the United States, "the energetic Chinese are also starting to stay away from Huawei.
Huawei's smartphone shipments fell 21% year-on-year to 18900 units in 2020, according to IDC, a US research firm. However, with the second half of the year, the decline has widened, and if it is limited to the fourth quarter (September-December), it will be down 43% from the same period last year. To be sure, there will be a tougher squeeze of 100 million vehicles in 2021.
