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SHANGHAI – The United States' tougher stance against Huawei Technology has slowed the Chinese company's progress towards making Samsung the world's leading smartphone maker, a senior Huawei executive said Tuesday.
"If there were no surprises, we would have become the biggest of the fourth quarter [of this year]. But now, we think this process will take longer, "said Shao Yang, director of strategy for Huawei Consumer Business Group, at the CES Asia technology fair in Shanghai.
Shao did not specify what "surprises" he was referring to, but his comments follow a de facto export ban imposed by the Trump administration. Last month, the US Commerce Department announced that companies must obtain a license to export US components or technologies to Huawei, forcing technology giants such as Google and Western Digital to suspend collaboration with Huawei. Chinese society.
Huawei's smartphones run on the Google Android operating system. Analysts and distributors have warned that if the smartphone maker lost access to Google's updates and signature services, Western consumers would avoid Huawei handsets. The Japanese company SoftBank Corp. had already canceled last month the plan to sell its smartphones P30 lite Huawei, while KDDI delayed the sale of this high-end phone, initially scheduled for the end of May.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest chip maker, announced last week that Huawei's orders had fallen since the Chinese company was hit by the new US restriction. Auras Technology, another major Taiwan-based Huawei device provider, also said that orders from a Chinese customer had been affected without specifying for which company.
Huawei has overtaken Apple to become the second largest smartphone provider in the second quarter of 2018 and has maintained that position ever since, according to IDC, a global research firm. The Shenzhen-based company currently sells between 500,000 and 600,000 phones a day, Shao said. In the first quarter of 2019, the smartphone business turnover amounted to 59.1 million units, compared with Samsung's 71.9 million.
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