After Google Phone Fizzles, Huawei Turns to AT&T for U.S. Expansion — The Information (Mar 21, 2017)
Based on the headline, I thought this was about Huawei finally being able to sell phones through AT&T’s postpaid business, because that’s the holy grail for Chinese manufacturers, and remains stubbornly unavailable to them at AT&T or any other major US wireless carrier. Where the Chinese vendors have had some success is in the prepaid business, and AT&T currently carries several ZTE phones on its GoPhone prepaid brand, as well as one Huawei phone in a partnership with Walmart. However, what’s actually happening here is that AT&T is certifying Huawei’s own chipset for use on its network, which is really just a possible first step to getting more Huawei phones onto AT&T store shelves. Huawei’s lack of brand awareness in the US continues to be its single biggest challenge – something that hasn’t really changed over the years. I remember having conversations about this with Huawei executives at CES at least six years ago. Until that changes, there’s very little incentive for AT&T to give over shelf space reserved for familiar brands consumers recognize to a relative unknown like Huawei.
via The Information
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