A VR headset won’t bring Huawei back from the dead

Rumor has it that Huawei is working on a high-end VR/AR headset to rival offerings from Apple and Meta.

Trademark filings indicate it will be called Vision Pro and is likely designed to launch as a China-only product, at least initially. It appears to be built with quality parts, including a 4K micro-OLED display from Sony, and is designed to be both lighter and less expensive than Apple’s Vision Pro. The name has also been mentioned in China, which should upset at least a few people in Cupertino.

It looks cool. I love the concept of VR and AR; it allows people to have experiences virtually that they might not be able to in the real world of meatspace, and playing games is a wonderful bonus. I have mixed feelings, however, about the equipment available for using virtual reality. This gets better with every hardware cycle, and a high-end headset from Huawei that doesn’t cost as much as a used car is a welcome idea.

That said, and encouraging Huawei to release the product, it is too little, too late for everyone outside of China. Huawei is dead, even if the company does not want to die.

In 2020, Huawei was the largest smartphone manufacturer on the planet and one of the largest technology OEMs in the world. The company has made great phones, tablets, laptops, accessories, and equipment that companies like AT&T need to provide you with phone and internet service.

This was before the crash. Rightly or wrongly, the US government has decided that Huawei products – particularly its 5G telecommunications equipment – ​​pose a security risk. I don’t know if that’s the case, and neither should you. All I know is what the people whose job it is to know about things like this have told us there are problems. I guess that’s not technically true, because I also know that Huawei was selling good equipment at good prices and was poised to take over the “5G market” in the United States. A lot of people with deep pockets didn’t like this at all.

The United States blacklisted Huawei and blocked any company wanting to sell products here from doing business with it. This means not buying or selling parts and not providing software to the company at any price. This would mean you were also blacklisted.

Other countries followed suit, and although Huawei was not blacklisted, obstacles were put in place to slow or block the company’s presence in much of the world. By the end of 2020, Huawei’s market share fell to 8%, and by the start of 2021, the name disappeared from every chart you see, and the company was lumped in with “other.”

Huawei has also done a lot of things to tarnish its reputation. The company was found guilty of intellectual property theft or reached an out-of-court settlement with Motorola, Cisco, PanOptis and MPEG LA. A jury also found that the company “misappropriated” trade secrets from T-Mobile, and the U.S. Department of Justice concluded evidence of financial fraud and violation of sanctions against Iran. Other evidence indicates that Huawei may also have had financial ties to North Korea.

Finally, there was Meng Wanzhou. Ms. Wanzhou was vice chairman and chief financial officer of Huawei as well as the daughter of the company’s founder. She was placed under house arrest by Canadian authorities while the United States sought to extradite her.

During complicated extradition hearings, the United States announced that it had resolved the case against Ms. Wanzhou. As part of this agreement, Ms. Wanzhou admitted that she lied to HSBC (Hong Kong Bank) to continue her financial transactions in the United States, and these statements supported evidence that Huawei was violating trade sanctions with Iran.

Regardless of what you think of these other companies or the U.S. government, you have to admit that this is not a good idea, especially for a company that is under close scrutiny due to its ties to Chinese intelligence services.

Once the dust settled, Huawei was unable to produce technology products that could sell in the West. Even in countries where Huawei products were available, sales fell.

This doesn’t mean the company makes bad products. Its phones and tablets are some of the best you can buy and compare very favorably to Samsung or Apple products. They simply have a 100% home-made operating system using software aimed at the Chinese market, without any support or service from Google. After all, it’s difficult to sell Android products that aren’t supported by Google and don’t have access to the Play Store.

A VR/AR headset will be the same. I don’t know if Huawei’s Vision Pro will run Android, but there’s a good chance it will. Huawei can use the free and open version of Android as it sees fit, and the operating system would run well on a headset. Meta uses it on the Quest 3 because it works great.

When it comes to the software and the cool things you can do with it, we should expect a China-friendly experience. Companies like Meta or Rovio are not allowed to provide apps to Huawei, and even TikTok will have to jump through hoops to do business with Huawei and stay alive in the United States.

That doesn’t mean it will be bad, but it does mean it won’t be what you’re used to and what you already like. Countries like Belgium or Mexico, where you can buy Huawei products, are full of people who already don’t buy them. A cheaper (and arguably better) version of Apple’s fancy new VR/AR headset might attract some, but it’s more likely that consumers will continue to ignore the company.

It’s a shame, but it’s also a hard truth. My personal feelings aside (I think Huawei phones and other Android products should never have been banned), there is no doubt that sanctions will kill Western sales before they even launch, if at all.

Maybe Huawei can save itself in the future, or something can change and the US will change its stance on the company. Maybe not.

Either way, a VR headset won’t save the business or generate new revenue streams.