Chinese company receives a major blow and losses Best Buy as one of their retailers.
It is definitely not a good time for Huawei, the world’s third largest smartphone manufacturer.
Best Buy, the US’s largest retailer electronics retailer, has reportedly stopped ordering smartphones from the Chinese company. They will also stop selling its products over the next couple of weeks. This is according to a person who is familiar with the issue.
“We don’t comment on specific contracts with vendors”, a Best Buy representative explained in a report. “And we make decisions to change what we sell for a variety of reasons,” he adds.
A Huawei spokesperson declined to comment on the issue but maintains that Best Buy is a “valued partner”. But “as a policy, we do not discuss the details of our partner relationships,” she said.
“Huawei currently sells its products through a range of leading consumer electronics retailers in the U.S.,” the Chinese company also said in a statement.
“We have a proven history of delivering products that meet the highest security, privacy and engineering standards in the industry and are certified by the Federal Communications Commission for sale in the U.S.”
This move follows AT&T and Verizon’s last-minute change of decision to not go ahead with promoting the Mate 10 on contract after the increased U.S. scrutiny of Chinese tech firms over protection issues.
The company was apparently expected to announce their partnership with AT&T in January at the CES but the US company backed out. When asked for comments, AT&T kept mum but about the reports but said that they never publicly committed to the partnership. Verizon followed the move a few days later.
