http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes
Huawei: 'We're not interested in US market'
Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei has revised its enterprise sales projections downward after admitting that it has given up on plans to expand into the US market. "We are not interested in the U.S. market anymore," Huawei executive vice president Eric Xu told Reuters. "Generally speaking, it's not a market that we pay …
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Tuesday 23rd April 2013 20:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
"I have the feeling that this will eventually come back to bit the US in the bum."
Why the feeling? I don't know if you are in the U.S.A., England, or really any other "Western" country, but the competition is rough! Either they will get their shit together and willingly venture to the USA in the future, or they will just roll over and die.
Truthfully, they are probably making a smart move right now by getting their ducks in line and not taking on the current competition. However, I don't care what company you are, you don't shy away from 200,000,000 million potential customers just because "you're not interested", just the thought of it seems like a paradox.
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Wednesday 24th April 2013 11:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 200,000,000 million? Wow
I suspect he meant 200 million which while not insignificant doesn't matter so much if they can do well in the much bigger market at home and in the EU. I would tend to think that is what will happen as the EU will want actual proof of wrong doing which I doubt they will find.
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Wednesday 24th April 2013 14:03 GMT QuinnDexter
You make it sound like they are leaving the potential $5bn willingly, whereas it is political pressure which is making it not worth their time.
Fight the battles you can win. If they spend $6bn chasing a potential $5bn then that does not make good sense. Huawei have the financial clout to take a hit on their profits to make their targets, but not that much. Huawei are hardcore - on the TFL bid for phone coverage on London Underground they said they would supply all hardware for free, providing the capability for all operators to link into their own networks, and they would charge industry standards for the manpower required to install of the network. They don't have posters of "Employee of the Moth". They have posters of "Worst performer of the month".
Also, just because a business doesn't crack the USAofA doesn't mean it will roll over and die... China's population is 1.3bn, there are nearly 500 million EU citizens, and just over 300 million yanks, who still have the ability to buy Huawei kit.
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Tuesday 23rd April 2013 20:22 GMT Charles Manning
This is not the end of the matter
Sure, for now, Huawei will back off the US market but in a few years they will likely come back.
Why would Huawei want all the hassles of trying to deal with American xenophobia when they can put that same energy into growth in other markets which give them payback.
Those same problems were experienced by many: Toyota, Samsung, Nokia,.. who eventually became more than successful.
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Wednesday 24th April 2013 00:18 GMT Shannon Jacobs
Mixed feelings from an American user of Huawei devices...
Mixed feelings here. I'm an American who has used at least two Huawei devices. Current one is a Huawei smartphone that is mostly superior to my previous HTC smartphone... Mostly my feelings towards Huawei are positive, but my experiences with the Huawei website are pretty negative, even worse than with HTC, which is saying quite a lot in the worse way. I sort of forgive Huawei on the grounds that HTC claimed to offer good support and to care about customer satisfaction, whereas I never expected anything much from Huawei except that the device would work pretty well and be on the less expensive side...
However, when it comes to personal information security and ethical considerations, Huawei is losing my regard and it's slipping down that rathole almost as fast as the google. I actually think that Huawei is backing away from the American market because they realized that they are not EVIL enough to compete effectively with the likes of the google, Microsoft, and Apple. (No, I'm not trolling the Apple fanbois, but I just think that Apple is anti-freedom, even while I would have to give Apple credit for a highly effective business model. In contrast, Microsoft was driven to evil by the lust for power and google probably backed into it due to the nature of American laws... Now don't get me started on Oracle.)
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Wednesday 24th April 2013 03:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Mixed feelings from an American user of Huawei devices...
My take is that there's a pantheon of evil.
Apple just wants your money and at their margins doesn't have to plot that hard for it.
Microsoft wants your money too, but at commodity margins they have to be everywhere hence their deeds.
Google doesn't care about your money, only about selling you as the commodity. The more they get on you, the more money you're worth to them. It's that objectification/dehumanization that makes them extra special evil. With bonus points for extreme hypocrisy along the way.
Oracle are Butlin's Redcoats by comparison.
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Thursday 25th April 2013 01:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Huawei: 'We're not interested in US market'
China reaped what it sowed. Part of the reason they've been advancing so fast is via state-sponsored industrial espionage. Or, if not state sponsored, at least the state looked the other way. Some of that espionage was conducted via exactly the means the US claimed they were worried Huawei would be doing.
Maybe they are a good corporate citizen (well, no worse than the corporations in the US, Europe, Japan and Korea at any rate) and wouldn't allow their products to be "bugged" when inserted into US networks, but the fact that sort of thing had happened in the past and China didn't do anything to stop it means that Chinese companies who could legitimately beat out American ones in the US marketplace won't get a fair shake for quite some time.
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