Huawei canceled production of Pixel devices over brand disputes

In an interview with the German site WinFuture, Colin Giles, vice president of Huawei’s consumer division, says that the company has not become the manufacturer of Google’s Pixel devices due to disagreements over brand use. This role eventually fell to HTC.

In the interview, Giles says that Huawei was approached by Google, but that the Chinese company made the decision to strengthen its own brand and no longer act as a manufacturer for devices of others. Google would have demanded that Huawei took over the manufacture of the device, but that it was not allowed to apply its own brand on the Pixel devices. Due to the desire to strengthen its own brand, Google’s demands were ‘incompatible with Huawei’s strategy’.

According to Giles, Huawei had already decided some time before that it would no longer act as a manufacturer for other parties. Nevertheless, the company would still work closely with Google. For example, collaboration projects such as the Nexus devices cannot be ruled out in the future. The collaboration between Google and HTC, which eventually took over the production of the Pixel devices, does not change that, according to Giles. Meanwhile, there are rumors that Huawei is working on a successor to the Nexus 7 tablet.

The Final Pixel