When major smartphone manufacturers talk about growth, they generally target three different markets: China, which is the biggest; the United States, which is highly influential and profitable; and the rest. India will soon rise from the latter pile, but until it does, Europe might be the most interesting battleground for the respective companies dominating the US and Chinese spheres. Until very recently, Western Europe looked a lot like the United States, with Samsung commanding more than a third of the market, Apple in a close second spot, and minnows picking up the scraps. But IDC’s latest data, as provided to The Verge, shows China’s Huawei enjoying a meteoric rise since the start of 2017. Yes, the same Huawei that the US government advises its citizens to avoid.
Huawei is marketing quite aggressively over here, but I still haven’t seen any of their phones in the wild. It’s exclusively Samsung and Apple, so far.
I see a lot of people using Huawei here in Austria. Problem that I didn’t know: at least the P9 lite and Mate 10 lite don’t support the frequency bands used in the USA. With T-Mobile I had 2G in Seattle and 3G in San Diego. With AT&T I had no reception AT ALL. (Those two phones also don’t support 5 GHz WIFI.)
Always check if the phone that you buy supports the frequency bands used in the country in which you plan to use it!
I have P10 Lite and it’s quite useful. Dual SIM for having my work-number with me without redundant headset. And for local SIM card when I vacation outside the EU.
Updates are regular and recently there was an upgrade to Android 7.0.
Fingerprint unlock is surprisingly convenient. Even my wife decided to replace her aging Samsung Alpha with P10 Lite, despite the screen being a bit too large to comfortably use.
Apart from that, the phone is the phone. It is hard to distinguish between different makers of glass rectangles, and it doesn’t really matter.
I first noticed Huawei in Dubai on some trip years ago. Two years later they were all over central Europe. Now they are one of the leading brands here. I recently changed my older Huawei P8lite for Samsung Galaxy. I regret the decision. Yes, Samsung is newer and has better specs but Huawei includes, for me, an easier to use interface additions – EMUI. The way you write SMS, “all apps” menu, keyboard, optimizing performance … It has been two months since I made a switch and still think Samsung is much clunkier.
Huawei generally has good hardware-price ratio and they know what they are doing.
The upside of the Samsung is that it has better customized ROM support.
Edited 2018-08-23 07:01 UTC
I’ve seen many, many Huawei phones (mainly the ‘lite’ versions) in Belgium.
Still, too many of the crappy cheap Samsungs and duct-taped-together old Iphones.
I’m of the persuasion ‘buy a phone under 250€, and when it stops working, buy another and recycle the first’ myself. Still very happy with my Wileyfox Swift 2 +, next phone may be one of the new Nokias (I like the 6.1 but it’s too big for me)
my mom has a P10 – it works as it should.
camera is quite awesome though.
Especially in tech you will see many people that use flagships from Apple and Samsung, but outside of that you see a whole range of phones. Samsung is still by far the biggest but I see plenty of people with other brands. My wife has a OnePlus, I have a Nokia/HMD now.
So if you really see exclusively Samsung and Apple (about 75% market share together in The Netherlands) you are really living inside a bubble because 1 in 4 phones in the wild would already be another brand. Surely you must have seen 4 phones in the wild right?
They’ve been reasonably popular in Ireland for a number of years now, and while I don’t have one myself, I don’t really hear anything bad about them from those I know who do use them. My wife is looking to buy a new phone at the moment and is considering a Huawei – I’ll be very interested to see how it goes.
Their UI is very… different from the standard Android UI. That’s one of the reasons I’ve kept away from them (the other being that I was charmed by Wileyfox’s price/quality proposal, twice). Of course I guess that can be solved by installing Nova or some other launcher.
I for one totally cannot stand EMUI and its copying of iOS.
I see lots of Huawei phones around me in Italy, but I am not going to buy one for the foreseeable future.
I am also very disappointed with the results of the P20 Pro camera tests, despite Eero Salmelin being at the helm of the imaging group that developed its camera.
Plus display notches and no headphone jacks on the flagships. Plus an underperforming SOC if compared to the competition.
I believe Samsung offers a more complete and balanced alternative, with ultimately better overall quality.
Edited 2018-08-23 08:22 UTC
Currently I am using a low cost – price under 100 EUR in Spain – Honor smartphone. Honor is a Huawei brand.
I change the smartphone every two years. It is something that I do hate for a number of reasons, but that I do because the device gets broken or becomes unusable. That is why I buy unexpensive smartphones.
I am very satisfied with my current smartphone. It works almost flawlessly, it is fast and in your hand it does not feel cheap despite its low price. It is by far the best smartphone I have owned. I think that this smartphone will last more than two years.
The Kirin SoC that powers my smartphone deserves praises. Despite my device has only 2 GB of RAM memory, its processor runs the OS and applications smoothly and it features a very accurate GPS. About the latter, it is much better than the GPS that MediaTek SoCs have, whose lack of accuracy renders Google Maps unusable.
The combination of quality and low price makes Huawei smartphones very competitive. For me, current Huawei rise is not a surprise.
The whole point of Chinese companies investing heavily into consumer products is to know the human landscape. It’s already well established the PLA has been using Chinese products in the US to target people with their intelligence services. Good luck, Europe. The PRC makes Google and Apple intrusion into your lives look like children playing.
Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy and on your neighboring Germany, they are everywhere.