Huawei is coming back. And not everyone is prepared for what is coming

In China it has already happened. Huawei has gone from being practically dead after the US sanctions of 2019 to lead its domestic market again in 2025 with a 18.1% share.

This national resurgence has not been a stroke of luck or the result of blind nationalism (although his subsequent resurgence helped), rather it has been a matter of engineering and strategy:

But China is just Act I. Act II, the global leap, is in progress. And when Huawei presses the button, the consumer electronics market will change. Again.

What’s stopping them… at the moment

There are two things holding Huawei out of China:

1. chips. The current Kirin chips, manufactured in 7 nm by SMIC, work but are two generations behind the Snapdragon or the 3nm Apple Silicon. That means less energy efficiency, less raw power. More importantly: production capacity is limited. SMIC can’t manufacture in volume like TSMC, at least not yet. Huawei can make competitive 5G smartphones, but it can’t make enough to saturate global markets.
2. Software. The other bottleneck. HarmonyOS can boast of being the second mobile ecosystem in China, even surpassing iOS in share. But outside of China, the equation changes. Without Google Play Services, without the complete catalog of Western apps, convincing a European or Latin American user to abandon Android is asking them for a leap of faith. Huawei knows this, that’s why it has invested a lot of money for six years to build AppGallery and its own services. But breaking the inertia of a consolidated duopoly requires more than good intentions: it requires critical mass.

Even so, these brakes are, if all goes well, temporary:

When both reach the minimum threshold—sufficient chips and viable ecosystem—Huawei will make the leap. And he will not do it timidly. He will do it with the aggressiveness of someone who has been preparing in silence for five years.

The scene that no one wants to name

There is an uncomfortable question floating in the air: What if Huawei doesn’t come back alone? What if other Chinese brands (Oppo, Xiaomi, Vivo, Realme) adopt HarmonyOS instead of Android?

It seems like science fiction, but let’s remember that the Chinese government has been promoting OpenHarmony as a “strategic national operating system.” And that the Chinese government has hinted that companies should reduce their dependence on Android and Windows. That in an environment of increasing technological friction with the West, having our own ecosystem is a matter of survival.

If that happens—and political pressure makes it increasingly feasible—the map changes.

• Android would not lose a manufacturer, it would lose all the big Chinese.
• Samsung would remain practically Google’s only relevant ally outside of the Apple ecosystem.
• And HarmonyOS would go from being a local Chinese curiosity to a real global third pole. Not tomorrow, but not in a decade either. In three or four years at most.

Besides, andn China Huawei is no longer just consumer electronics: it is an automotive player. Its automotive division has become a key technology partner for several local brands, from Aito until Arcfox. It doesn’t manufacture cars, but it puts the brain into it: sensors, software, connectivity, digital platform. There are already complete “Huawei Inside” models there.

That muscle did not exist before the US blockade. And now it is part of the Huawei that could reach Europe: one capable of entering your pocket, your wrist, your home… and also your car. It seems familiar to us.

Meanwhile in Europe…

Huawei has done something interesting in Europe: not disappear.

Here Sales of its smartphones suffered a brutal collapse overnight. Not being able to include Google services was lethal. But they did continue to sell other products:

They are the products that do not depend on Google. And they keep the brand visible, preserve the memory of what Huawei was… and pave the way for a better tomorrow.

Every GT watch or set of FreeBuds headphones someone buys in Europe is a seed of future loyalty. It is a party waiting in the trenches for it to die down while the others assumed that they would withdraw from the battle.

AND Europe will be precisely its real test. No China, they have already won there. Not the United States, where sanctions and market inertia make any short-term operation impossible. Europe, where Huawei became a sales leader and where it built prestige with its commitment to Leica, where there is a certain brand nostalgia and above all where there is no formal veto on its products.

Huawei has been in charge of closing local gaps. For example, a bridge to make mobile payments from its platform that compensates for forced trade restrictions.

If they manage to offer a good enough ecosystem – it doesn’t even have to be perfect, just enough – there is a market.

Because what we (neither consumers nor the industry) cannot forget is that Huawei was never just hardware. It was always a complete value proposition: design, cameras, ecosystem integration. At first, with mediocre quality while being friendly. But then it got better. That doesn’t go away because they block your access to Google for five years. It reinvents itself.

The window opens

Huawei has already announced its plans to relaunch its smartphones in up to 60 countries. Starting with emerging markets, where its reputation was not so eroded and where US restrictions have less political weight. Europe’s time will come.

And when it does, with Kirin chips in volume and a more mature HarmonyOS, the market will shake up. Samsung will have to accelerate, the rest of the Chinese manufacturers – which occupied the space that Huawei freed up, with Xiaomi at the helm – will face a rival that, in addition to returning, will do so without the dependencies that the rest drag, and even Apple can see in them a threat in the medium term.

Huawei has been building autonomy for five years while many of us considered it finished. Or relegated. They bet against the toughest sanctions the tech industry has seen in decades, and they are close to winning. They haven’t done it yet, not completely. But they are still in it ring. And this time without the chains from before.

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Featured image | P.L.