At the end of February, a Weibo message suggested that the maker of the next Nexus smartphone (or tablet) is based in China, and recent reports indicate that Huawei might be the one.
That particular message is believed to have been posted on Weibo by iSuppli’s Director of China Research Kevin Yang. GizmoChina claims that Huawei has been confirmed as the maker of the next-gen Nexus phone, and that Google will also partner up again with LG for a Nexus device this year.
LG made two Nexus phones, and Google has a habit of going back to its partners. After all, the tech giant went back to HTC to get the Nexus 9 done four years after the launch of the first ever device from this family, the HTC Google Nexus One. On the other hand, a partnership with Huawei doesn’t seem that far-fetched now, that the Chinese OEM has made its first Android Wear smartwatch.
Come to think of it, Motorola Mobility, the maker of the Nexus 6 smartphone, is now owned by Lenovo, a China-based company, so the entire rumor may be a PR strategy to keep the Nexus line fresh in memory.
If Huawei really proves to be the maker of the next Nexus phone, this proves that the Chinese company really fears Xiaomi, which at the moment is China’s number one smartphone vendor. Such a move could also help diminish the misconception that all that Chinese companies do is create copycats of popular devices. Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei’s consumer division, described Xiaomi at MWC 2015 as an “ultra low-end brand” for “low-end people.” I would say that his language is not at all professional, and more than that, he simply denies to see the truth.
As much as I admire Xiaomi, I’m happy that it won’t mingle with others, as I want it to remain Google, Samsung and Apple’s competition. Otherwise, these three giants wouldn’t have anything to fear but themselves.
Regardless of who’s going to make Google’s next device, I really wonder if it will still fall under the Nexus brand. The Nexus 7 trick might not work for every device out there, so what is that they have in mind? They can’t simply go and name their devices Nexus 6 II or Nexus 7 III, and apart from the number 8, all the others have had their go.
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