The market had been warning for some time: Huawei was going to return. Google’s veto United States ostracized to a Chinese company that was taken as a scapegoat at the dawn of the current trade war. What was initially a blow has ended in a big comeback leading he domestic market with more than 18% share. and he Huawei Mate 80 Pro It is another example that the brand does not want us to forget about its mobile phones outside of China.
There are a couple of very important asterisks.
In short. We told it a few days ago: Huawei’s best feature has been neither its technological innovation nor its investment to give wings to the Chinese foundry. His best quality has been resilience. That translates to 880 billion yuan (about $127 billion). registered in 2025.
Put in context, it is the company’s second best year after the glorious 2020 in which it hugged Samsung and Apple and in which it achieved 891,000 million yuan (129,000 million dollars). And it has achieved this by looking at the local market, building an ecosystem under the name of HarmonyOS (something that is very popular in China, and Xiaomi is an example of this) and managing to be in all parts of the business.
Huawei was no longer just consumer technology: it was home automation and even cars. The Western blow pushed not the reinvention of a company that was already on that path, but rather to seek that goal more ardently. And it seems that they are moving, again, outside their borders.
Mate 80 Pro. In Spain we have continued receiving Huawei devices. For example, smart watches are some of the best you can buy – we just published our review of the Huawei Watch GT Runner 2-, in headphones they have models as interesting as the FreeClip 2 and we have continued receiving tablets and some mobile phones like the Huawei Pure 80 or the Mate X7a foldable.
However, not all of them arrived and the Mate 80 Pro, the company’s spearhead, seemed trapped in China. In a recent presentation that we were able to attend in Madrid, Huawei has shown a slide in which it confirms the price in euros of the Huawei Mate 80 Pro, a mobile phone with a 6.75-inch OLED screen, with 8,000 nits of brightnesswith its own Kirin 9030 processor and a triplet of cameras made up of:
- 50 Mpx main with variable aperture from f/1.4 to f/4.0.
- 40 Mpx wide angle.
- 48 Mpx 4x telephoto with an impressive f/2.1 aperture.
They have not talked about markets, yes.
No concessions. The price? 1,299 euros that are a declaration of intentions. In the analysis of the Huawei Mate X7 we have seen that the performance of that chip is more similar to that of a mid-range than that of a TOP range. It is commendable that they have managed to develop it without being able to access the resources of the West – of ASMLmainly-, but it is not a processor for a 1,300 euro mobile. It also doesn’t have 5G at this point.
However, in the rest of the sections in which they can innovate and grow as they did before the veto, they are doing so. 100 W charging, cameras that promise a lot, good storage speed and screens to match. It’s a “here we are, we continue making high-end mobile phones”, a declaration of intent and a kind of “because I can”.
The reality: it’s complicated. However, there is no denying the elephant in the room: the Huawei Mate 80 Pro, no matter how good it looks, still cannot natively access Google mobile services. It is no longer not being able to install your apps, but others that depend on those GMS They won’t work on the phone. It’s a huge concession for many users, but it may not sound so bad to others.
We are in a time in which many Europeans are beginning to resonate with the idea of abandoning American technology and softwareand that’s where Google comes in. In hardware there are proposals such as Fairphone 6 and every time more alternatives appear of software so as not to have to depend on those American programs.
Who had… retained? As I say, it is undeniable that Huawei’s position by sneaking a mobile phone for 1,300 euros with so many concessions is complex and optimistic, but it is still an interesting approach: they are gaining confidence thanks to rising like foam in the local market and they know that they have good foundations and, at least, a name that continues to sound good in the heads of many who have good memories of beasts like the P30 Pro.
At the moment, we don’t know where this Mate 80 Pro will end up being released. Perhaps that announcement of the price of 1,299 euros is putting its foot in to test the temperature of the water, but although they know that they are competing at a disadvantage, a mobile phone of that price is a better thermometer of how the European market vibrates than a 2,100 euro foldable like the X7.
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