Samsung Is Giving Away a Huawei Phone as a Prize in China

Samsung is currently running a giveaway promotion in China in which the winners will receive a Huawei smartphone. Yes, you read that right. Instead of the Galaxy S10 or Galaxy Note 9 or even one of the company's brand-new Galaxy A series phones, the South Korean tech giant will be awarding Huawei Nova 4e units to the lucky winners. If you are baffled, you are not alone. Users of Chinese social media website Weibo were also gobsmacked when they saw Samsung announce the giveaway earlier this week.

Samsung's Weibo post revealing the giveaway is filled with users' comments wondering whether the announcement was a mistake and why Samsung was awarding Huawei phones.

“Samsung sends Huawei mobile phones??? (machine translated),” wrote one Weibo user.

“Samsung sent Huawei, is this true? (machine translated),” asked another Weibo user.

This isn't all, the users also pulled up Samsung for using the wrong image of the Huawei Nova 4e and mocked the company for giving away a mid-range phone and not a flagship.

As you can expect, there is a good reason why Samsung is giving away a Huawei smartphone, instead of one of its own. As the company explained to users on Weibo as well, the Huawei Nova 4e packs the company's ISOCELL Bright GD1 image sensor in the camera setup, and the South Korean company is looking for promote ISOCELL image sensors.

Unlike most smartphone makers, Samsung designs and makes a lot of its components, including displays, chipsets, image sensors, and more. These components are also sold to other smartphone manufacturers for use in their own smartphones, like Huawei has purchased ISOCELL Bright GD1 sensors for use in the Nova 4e.

Although Samsung is the world's biggest smartphone maker in terms of shipments, it fails miserably when competing with local players in the Chinese smartphone market. As per data from Counterpoint Research, Samsung has been stuck with just 1 percent of the smartphone market share in China for the last five quarters, whereas Huawei accounted for 34 percent in the last quarter. So, it makes sense of the company to try and generate revenue by selling its components to smartphone makers, rather than trying and failing to sell its phones to Chinese consumers.