If ever there were a business story proving the folly of sanctions in today’s hyper-integrated world, it’s Huawei and the runaway success of the Mate 60 Pro smartphone it unveiled last month.
For years now, Huawei has been central to US efforts to stymie Chinese tech development. Since 2019, when Donald Trump was in the White House, Huawei has been on Washington’s “Entity List.” That greatly limited the Shenzhen-based company’s access to key technology, essentially knocking it out of the smartphone game.
Well, not so much. “This is a breakthrough for Huawei, which has not been able to produce a 5G mobile phone since 2020 and has seen its once-commanding global market share shrivel to basically zero,” says analyst Tilly Zhang at Gavekal Research.