The other day, a perplexing story hit the tech news cycle. Despite making and selling one of the best and most popular Android Wear watches, Huawei was considering replacing Google’s smartwatch OS in favor of Samsung’s Tizen. The first reaction was to simply dismiss this along with its grain of salt. But today’s piece from Android Police makes that rumor a more likely possibility. In it, AP claims that despite finding some success working with Google and their ecosystem, Huawei failed in their ultimate goal of gaining traction in the US market. A failure they so adamantly blame Google for, that the Chinese OEM declined the offer to make the Nexus Pixel phones this year, passing the privilege to Google’s second choice, HTC. So what went wrong?
In 2015, Google released two Nexus devices. The really great, but mostly ignored Nexus 5X, and the even greater Nexus 6P. That year also saw Google advertising their Nexus phones in a more aggressive manner. Something they barely did in the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9k7J-u66G8
The paid-for exposure along with almost universally glowing reviews made the 6P a success. Not iPhone level success, but enough to make Google and Huawei happy. Or so we all thought. As it turns out, Huawei may have gotten the short end of the stick. Apparently, the initial promise made to the OEM was a phone that would be sold by all major carriers and heavily advertised. This was supposed to be the big push by Huawei to finally become a recognized brand in the US, a market they have had zero luck penetrating. As we now know, none of that happened, as the 6P was not sold by a single carrier. AP is claiming that talks between Google and the carriers broke down — and the huge advertising campaign Google promised vanished, possibly as a result of that. Following the failure to register with the minds of the consumers, Huawei’s following products like the Honor 5X and GX8 sold poorly and the MateBook, a very competent Microsoft Surface clone, was DOA. Suffice it to say, Huawei was not happy.
This year, Google again approached Huawei. This time to possibly make 2 or even 3 phones. But instead of finding a way to heal the wounds of 2015, Google instead proposed devices that would carry only the big G branding with no mention of Huawei at all. Not surprisingly, they were shown the door. Not surprisingly as well, was that a very desperate HTC accepted Google’s terms because, well lets’s face it, it’s not like they are selling any phones with their own branding on it anyway. Ironically it looks like the Pixel phones are set for the most exposure than any previous Nexus models as all 4 major US carriers will carry both phones and a big commercial push is planned.
Put all this together and you might just have yourself a Huawei smartwatch running Tizen one day.
What do you think about reports that Huawei and Google had a falling out of sorts? Let us know in the comments below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/10/03/source-huawei-passed-on-chance-to-produce-pixel-phones-us-division-badly-struggling/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Android Police[/button]
