Huawei, banned from the US, teases consumers with Black Friday 100 per cent discount offer
- After the Twitter post drew thousands of likes, Huawei USA said it was ‘just a joke’ because ‘we can’t sell anything in the USA’
- Huawei reported a 32 per cent slump in sales for the first nine months of 2021, deepening a 29.4 per cent decline in the first half
Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co has teased American consumers with a “100 per cent off” Black Friday discount on its phones in the US, a market it is banned from selling into.
“Black Friday special! 100% OFF all phones we currently sell in the US,” the US branch of the Shenzhen-based company said in a post on Twitter, the social media platform banned in China.
In May 2019, the US added Huawei to a trade blacklist over the company’s alleged ties to Beijing, which were seen as a national security threat. Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Huawei, which briefly overtook Samsung Electronics as the world’s largest smartphone maker in 2020, has seen the collapse of the business after US sanctions denied it access to advanced chips.
As an alternative, the company has started to sell refurbished phones, and in the latest move licensed its smartphone technology to obscure third parties.