Huawei vs. USA: The first victim is a smart speaker
A Huawei smart speaker should have been presented at the IFA in Berlin. This will not happen. The reason: the trade war between the USA and China.
In the USA's ongoing trade war against China and Huawei in particular, a first product has been discontinued. It is a smart speaker that will now never come onto the market in its intended form.
Furthermore, Huawei has shelved plans to integrate its smartphones with Android Auto.
A year's work for nothing
The smart speaker from Huawei was developed in collaboration with Google. It would have been a speaker that could have accessed the resources of the Google Assistant. The device would have been unveiled at IFA in early September 2019, according to the news magazine The Information.
The development of the speaker is an example of what close collaboration between Google and a manufacturer can achieve. Huawei and Google have often tackled and successfully realised such projects in the past. However, Huawei has been on the USA's Entity List since last May. This means that US companies such as Google are no longer allowed to do business with companies on this list. Negotiations between US President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping have resulted in a relaxation of the ban, but overall the ban still stands.
Huawei goes on charm offensive
While the first projects have fallen through, Huawei continues to fight rumours and ignorance. On the website Zukunftsversprechen.de - formerly HuaweiAntwortet.de - the Chinese company is trying to win back sympathy with information.
Another part of the charm offensive stands out. Reader rem3_1415926 noted in a comment that there are a conspicuous number of Huawei campaigns on sale.
This is due to the fact that Huawei wants to make itself popular in the fight against misinformation - the company reacted quite late, perhaps too late - also through an aggressive pricing and promotion policy. Contrary to what Rem3 implies, this has nothing to do with the attitude of a retailer or a company. The promotions not only serve to correct a feared slump in sales, but also to raise brand awareness - the attention that the brand receives as a result of the promotions. <p
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