The history of Huawei is that of a company that bordered on absolute success in the world of mobile telephony to fall to the bottom by a decision of the US government in May 2019. The US veto has prevented Huawei from manufacturing its own Kirin chips , being forced to use chips from other manufacturers without 5G connectivity. Although 5G connectivity has not turned out to be the wonder they were trying to sell us, it still has a lot of pull when it comes to opting for one device or another. However, what has done the most damage to the company is the ban on including Google services and its applications, including the Play Store, on its phones. Like it or not, Google services are ubiquitous on Android. Many applications rely on Google services to work (for example, to display maps, manage payments or display advertising), so not having them is a problem when using certain apps. Huawei has tried to solve this problem by launching its own AppGallery store, but manufacturers have not adopted it en masse. One of the absent is Google, so you will not find Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail or other apps natively in the Huawei store. The consumer division, which at the time accounted for half of its turnover and aimed to become number 1, has seen a drop in sales of almost 50%, especially in smartphones. In 2020, the company sold 188.5 million units (including those of Honor), while in 2021 they only managed to add 35 million. This has led the company into a difficult situation. According to El Confidencial, the Spanish subsidiary of Huawei has been suffering an incessant trickle of departures and constant cuts. In fact, many of the people from Huawei that we usually dealt with from this blog are now on the staff of other manufacturers.
The sources consulted by El Confidencial assume a reduction of the consumer division to the “minimum expression”. Other divisions will be extinguished entirely, such as the department in charge of the app stores, the video platform, the cloud and other services. The company keeps releasing phones, which are highly rated by critics for things like the camera, but this is not enough to make users want to complicate their lives with software. After all, for a similar price, you can find equally good phones with all the Google services. The cuts also threaten the closure of the company’s flagship stores located in Madrid and Barcelona, something that could happen in 2023. The 1,100-square-meter store that the company has on Gran Vía street in Madrid is the largest it has Huawei has in the world outside of China. In Barcelona, although the place is slightly smaller, the location is also excellent in Plaza Cataluña, a few meters from the Apple App Store. Consulted about these facts by El Confidencial, the company acknowledges that “it has made some business adjustments, focusing on the key businesses of Huawei Consumer BG in Spain to adapt to the needs of the local market”, but does not give any information about the scope of cuts or about the closure of physical establishments.
