Huawei denies that it wants to divest P- and Mate-series smartphones

Huawei has denied that it would sell the P-series and Mate-series smartphones to a consortium of the Shenzhen government and Chinese retailers. Previously, Huawei sold its Honor brand to such a consortium.

Huawei has no plan to divest the smartphone series, the manufacturer says in a response to a Reuters story. The manufacturer calls the rumors “unfounded”. Reuters claims based on two independent sources that Huawei would like to sell its high-end smartphone series, because Huawei has been placed in a precarious position due to the US trade ban.

A consortium would gain access to components needed to make a high-end phone. That also happened to Honor, which was sold by Huawei a few months ago and which recently presented its first post-sale phone. In recent months, Honor has been able to close deals with MediaTek, among others, but also with AMD, Intel, Micron, Microsoft, Samsung, SK Hynix and Sony.

In the meantime, Huawei is struggling to get the necessary components together for its P40 and Mate 40 phones released last year. As a result, there would be shortages of those models. A sale would allow a buyer to access the necessary suppliers.

The difficulties for Huawei are due to the trade ban imposed by the United States government. That ban has been in place since May 2019 and became stricter in September 2020. In addition to those high-end models in the P and Mate series, Huawei also has much cheaper models, such as its Y phones, Nova models and the P Smart series.

Looking back: video review of last year’s Huawei P40 Pro