Prabhu RamWith effect from August 19, American companies including Google are prohibited from selling products and services (like Android) to Huawei, and the Chinese giant is leaving no stone unturned to ensure the perception that business is as usual.
There is an eerie silence about the company’s operations in India. Several industry experts who previously spoke about the ban declined to comment now citing various reasons.
Some said that media reports were creating negativity around the brand. Huawei’s retail chain partners are busy trying to paint a rosy picture, that of the ban causing minimum impact on its smartphones sales. On the flip side, most retail chains seem to have limited Huawei smartphone models — P30 series and Honor 8X. Older models have not been available offline for the last few months — an indication that Huawei may have seen this coming.
“Huawei’s recent strides in smartphone innovation have been incredible. As such, the headroom for growth in India remains high with the right marketing and messaging for consumers,” said Prabhu Ram, Head- Industry Intelligence Group at CyberMedia Research.
“Huawei consumers’ sentiment remains unaffected as it’s still early days, and the entire export ban is still in its infancy. From a consumer perspective, it is still tough to predict the outcome post 90 days. In such a fluid situation, users stand to lose by selling their device on the basis of pure speculation and panic, for mere peanuts.”
