2019 was a turbulent year for Huawei with UK’s position on the vendor still unclear
New research conducted by YouGov has revealed that UK consumers’ confidence in Huawei has significantly deteriorated as only 10 per cent now trust the Chinese brand.
It follows a difficult year for Huawei which has seen the vendor embroiled in a US-China trade war that has led to Google services being restricted on Huawei devices.
Huawei’s position in the UK has also become unclear after Prime Minister Boris Johnson hinted at a ban on using its products when building 5G networks.
In total 2,182 UK adults were surveyed by YouGov, who found that one fifth of respondents (22pc) said that they would never choose the brand, which is up from 10 per cent when asked this in December 2018.
During this same period the number of consumers who said they’d consider Huawei products, dropped from 19 per cent to 15 per cent.
The perception of Huawei arguably coincides with the UK’s broader distrust of China, said YouGov as 63 per cent of Brits consider the country untrustworthy, with only Russia (73 per cent) ranked higher.
Other concerns for Chinese products are over worries on China’s environmental record (61pc) and a belief that products are substandard in quality (35pc).
YouGov also revealed that MPs in the UK are against the use of Huawei’s 5G infrastructure as 62 per cent oppose any involvement in building the network compared to 34 per cent who would allow Huawei to be involved in non-core parts of the infrastructure.