HUAWEI exec says goal to be number one 'may take longer,' surprising no one

At the beginning of the year, Huawei talked pretty big about how it would ascend to be the number one global smartphone manufacturer, knocking Samsung down to number two. However, now that the HUAWEI ban is in effect, that goal is less realistic.

Shao Yang, chief strategy officer of HUAWEI Consumer Business Group, admitted as much on Tuesday (via The New York Times). He said, “[Huawei] would have become the largest in the fourth quarter (of this year) but now we feel that this process may take longer.”

This might be the understatement of the year, as the United States ban on companies working with HUAWEI is no doubt debilitating every facet of its business.

While it’s impossible to speculate on whether or not HUAWEI would have achieved its goal had the Entity List not happened, all signs pointed to the company taking the number one spot. The company had been on a winning streak up until the middle of May and had attained the number two spot even without an official presence in the United States, something which both Samsung and Apple (the number three manufacturer) have enjoyed for decades.

To further emphasize the company’s success, Shao Yang says it sells between 500,000 to 600,000 smartphones per day.

According to The New York Times, analysts suspect the HUAWEI ban could slash the company’s shipments by as much as a quarter and it could lose access to entire markets.

We reached out to HUAWEI for more information on the company’s current goals, and will update this article should we hear back.

NEXT: The first major casualty of HUAWEI’s US ban is a new MateBook