I agree that Huawei didn't have the best phones, but it was not that far off, and for the price it was arguably a better phone.
Need a phone with a great camera? Then Huawei is much better than anything Samsung, Apple, and Google makes. Huawei market share was taking off at crazy speed before the bans on both the software and hardware side.
The Huawei ban's impact on smartphones was mostly a side effect. The real target was wireless infrastructure. Any time spent analyzing the phone stuff is a waste, that was all mostly collateral damage as we tried to prevent Huawei from dominating our domestic 5G (and related) networks.
They are probably referring to the period where Huawei struggled to even ship a device because of sanctions applied to them that made it impossible to source components.
Once these were overcome they have bounced back and are looking stronger than ever, their revenue has now risen above the pre-sanctions peak.
