Huawei CEO: potential absence from Windows Phone 8 launch due to US political factors

Huawei CEO Yu Chengdong

It looks like the other shoe has dropped with OEM manufacturer Huawei and US relations. We reported a few weeks ago that the US Congress took a strong stance against Huawei and ZTE due to their closeness to the Chinese government, accusations of IP theft and other irregularities with the company.

Now the CEO, Yu Chengdong, has taken to the social network Sina Weibo to announce that Huawei will be absent from the Windows Phone 8 launch at the end of the month and the reason is due to (translated) “Sino-US political and economic storm”.

That sounds like Microsoft may be distancing themselves a bit from Huawei until this controversy blows over or in the worst case scenario, Huawei is dropped from Windows Phone 8. Indeed, through personal communication with people in the know at Microsoft the impression we were given is they do not want to talk about Huawei.

The message posted on Sina Weibo

Recently, a render and real photos of the Huawei Ascend W1 made the rounds. Featuring a 4” WVGA display and a 5MP camera, the device looks to fill in a mid-range portion of the Windows Phone 8 lineup—an area that we think is not exactly lacking.

The device is quite nice looking but as we’ve suggested, Huawei has borrowed heavily from Nokia (color, 2D glass) and HTC (One X’s camera housing). We’re not sure if that factor has played into this apparent distancing by Microsoft but we don’t think it helped.

Source: Sina Webio; Thanks, hengxiang32401, for the tip!