Huawei lost to Google, Qualcomm and TSMC. What he didn’t lose was something more important: his reputation.

Last week were the Xataka Awards 2025. Stella Li, global vice president of BYD, took the Xataka Legend. He Galaxy S25 Ultra It swept the super high range. Freepik was crowned as best Spanish technology company.

It was a night of proper names, drinks and conversations with readers. But There is a prize that, for those of us who spend a lot of time in Xatakaas workers or as readers, has a special weight. Not because of its glamour, but because of what it represents.

The Community Award is not decided by any jury. There are no internal debates. You, the readers, decide with your votes. It is the device that you liked the most, without filters. In fact, it is the only one that is not delivered by any employee of the house, but rather by members of the community who represent it on stage. In the image that heads this article, three of them with Cristina Isidoro, PR Manager of Huawei in Spain, who collected the award.

Because this year he won it Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro. And when I saw the result, I smiled slightly: it was more than just a reward for a well-made smartwatch. It was pure symbolism.

Look at the historical list of winners of this award:

Almost all, Chinese devices or devices with a Chinese soul that share a pattern: focus on value for money, practical innovation, and in some cases, arriving wanting to break molds.

But among all of them, Huawei is the only one that did not arrive yesterday promising a lot for little. It is the only one that was already in the world elite, disputing the throne with Samsung and in fact about to snatch it awaybefore the United States decided to use it as a pawn in its trade war.

Because Huawei has not conquered the perception of premium quality by offering more gigabytes for fewer euros. It conquered it by being, for years, simply a great option.

• He P20 Pro It was the first mobile phone with a triple camera that really worked.
• The Mate 20 Pro was an unapologetic technical beast compared to the high-end greats.
• Their MateBook laptops have been worthy rivals of the Surface.
• And their GT watches already stood out for batteries that lasted weeks when Apple asked for a charger every night.

They weren’t cheap. They were good. And that difference, in the technology market, is abysmal.

Then 2019 arrived. EntityList. American veto. Goodbye Google, goodbye Qualcomm, goodbye TSMC. Sales outside China plummeted and the Western narrative was unanimous: Huawei was dead. Without the Google ecosystem, without access to the supply chain, it was impossible to survive in this business.

But no one explained to them that it was impossible.

Instead of giving up, they built their own universe.

1. HarmonyOS on more than a billion devices.
2. Kirin Chips own, then Ascend for AI.
3. Huawei Cloud growing in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

They didn’t beg to go back to Google Play like we might perhaps have expected them to do. They simply built another entire ecosystem. Without one word higher than another.

At the beginning of the month I was in China and was able to try several of their devices, including some that just left there. The premium feel is real. And something that we do have here, the GT 6 Pro, is not a gadget 150 euros that promises too much and falls halfway. It is a watch in the 400 euro range that performs very well. and the community of Xataka has passed sentence with his prize.

That doesn’t happen by chance. Xiaomi shines in value for money. Realme and Oppo play there. Nothing has its aesthetic indie. But Huawei is the only Chinese brand that, when you mention it, the European consumer automatically thinks of “serious quality”, without the asterisks that others have. And she did it right after they tried to destroy her.

The Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro is a great watch. But winning the 2025 Community Award means something else: It is the recognition of the only Chinese brand that has come out of the perception low cost without giving up its origin. It is the prize that, in a way, China had been pursuing for decades. Respect without conditions. And it has been won by a company that they tried to annihilate.

Sometimes vetoes don’t kill. They forge legacies.

Featured image | Xataka

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