AT&T was supposed to announce a partnership to carry some of Huawei’s hottest Android phones, but the deal was dropped at the last minute, according to reports. Apparently, the US is worried about potential ties between Huawei and the Chinese government, which is why the smartphone maker won’t be getting any contracts with American mobile operators in the near future.
That didn’t stop Huawei CEO Richard Yu from going off script during Huawei’s CEO keynote to express his annoyance.
As The Verge puts it, Yu concluded the keynote with a slide reading Something I Want to Share.
It wasn’t about a One more thing Apple-like trick. Instead, Yu tackled the AT&T issue head-on.
“Everybody knows that in the US market that over 90 percent of smartphones are sold by carrier channels,” the CEO said. “It’s a big loss for us, and also for carriers, but the more big loss is for consumers because consumers don’t have the best choice.”
Yu said that Huawei won the trust of clients, carriers included, around the world, which should be enough for the American ones too.
“We win the trust of the Chinese carriers, we win the trust of the emerging markets… and also we win the trust of the global carriers, all the European and Japanese carriers,” he said. “We are serving over 70 million people worldwide. We’ve proven our quality, we’ve proven our privacy and security protection.”
But no matter what Yu will say, and he spoke without a prompted script, the fact remains that Huawei will have to sell its flagship phones, Mate 10 Pro included, directly to US buyers for the time being.
