Huawei is mulling a sale of a multi-billion dollar stake in its mobile devices unit to a foreign investor that could connect it with U.S. carriers. The renewed interest in such a deal comes after a failed $2.2 billion bid by Bain Capital and Huawei for 3Com [1]. Since 3Com had contracts with the U.S. government for some security services, the deal did not pass the regulatory process.

Huawei has risen as a competitive force on the networking side of the wireless industry [2], but the company has had some difficulty breaking into the competitive handset market in the U.S. and Europe. In 2006 Huawei inked a deal with Vodafone to supply 3G handsets to the various carriers through Europe. For handsets in the U.S. however, Huawei only has one announced carrier partner: MetroPCS.

For more on the report:
- read this WSJ article [3] (sub. req.)