If you look at the latest US mobile market share data, two brands pop up - Apple and Samsung - which together account for the vast majority of phones sold on US carriers. The rest, like LG, Motorola, HTC, ZTE or Google's Pixels, are left fighting over bread crumbs. Intent to break that duopoly, the world's third-largest cell phone maker Huawei announced its grand plans to enter the US market recently, starting with the flagship Mate 10 line.
Analysts, however, are rather skeptical about its chances to lure people away from either Samsung or Apple, and are in fact predicting that it will be "almost prohibitively difficult" for the company to make US customers pick Huawei's high-end phones with a carrier plan if it doesn't plan to compete on price, as CEO Richard Yu suggested. "If you come down a few hundred dollars then it [the market] looks completely different. There’s a huge customer segment that can afford $10 or $20 per month rather than $30 or $40 per month," according to analyst Roger Entner.
We'll have to wait and see how will the Mate 10 and 10 Pro be priced on AT&T, and, perhaps, Verizon as well, but the phones are perfectly capable of holding well on their own. The 10 Pro offers the best battery life in its class, a very capable dual camera that is only a notch below the iPhone X or Note 8 snappers, and has a 80%+ screen-to-body ratio on a premium glass design. In other words, it ticks all the desirable boxes, so we wouldn't discount Huawei as a worthy competitor of Apple and Samsung in the US just yet.
Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.
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