Huawei is selling its budget-price Honor smartphone brand to save the fraught business from damaging United States sanctions that were imposed on its parent company.
The move stated is targeted at stimulating Honor by unraveling it from Huawei’s network equipment and other industries, which Washington says are a security threat, an allegation that Huawei has denied. They are under sanctions that block access to the majority of the United States processor chips and other technology.
Huawei’s statement gave no financial information but said the company won’t have an ownership stake once the sale gets over. Huawei will continue its flagship Huawei smartphone brand.
Image from Huawei
The purchaser is a firm which is formed by a tech enterprise and is owned by the Shenzhen southern city government, where Huawei is headquartered, with a group of Honor retailers. Previous news reports on speculations of a probable sale put the cost as high as 100 billion Chinese Yen.
Huawei is China’s 1st international global tech brand which is currently at the center of United States-Chinese tension over technology, security as well as spying.
American officials have said that Huawei might enable Chinese spying, which the company has denied since the accusations. They further see Chinese government-supported technology development as a danger to the United States industrial dominance.
United States security complaints about Huawei’s emphasis on its business making switching equipment for smartphone and Internet businesses and its foremost role in next-gen telecom tech. The Trump administration has politicized European and other allies to eliminate Huawei and other Chinese suppliers as they advance networks.
In the meantime, the chief financial officer’s daughter (of Huawei) is being held in Canada and is battling against repatriation to the USA to face charges related to probable desecrations of trade sanctions on Iran.
Sanctions that were imposed in 2019 have blocked Huawei’s access to most United States’ processor chips and other technology. Those were stiffened in 2020 when the White House barred manufacturers globally from using United States technology to manufacture chips for Huawei.
Tuesday’s declarations gave no sign of how Honor’s latest owners were planning to regain access to United States chips and other technology containing Google’s popular music, maps, and other services. Other Chinese smartphone brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo operate without such boundaries.
