Huawei is turning to parts suppliers in Korea, Japan and Taiwan as a U.S. boycott bites and crisis envelops the Chinese tech giant.

Some market research agencies expect Huawei to suffer up to a 24-percent decline in smartphone sales this year.

According to Huawei Korea on Monday, executives from headquarters in Beijing came here last Thursday and Friday to meet executives at Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Samsung Display and LG Display to discuss long-term supply contracts for memory chips, OLED panels and camera modules.

Korean manufacturers sold US$10.7 billion worth of parts to Huawei last year.

"Now Google, Qualcomm and ARM have stopped doing business with Huawei, a halt in supplies from Korean manufacturers could deal an irrecoverable blow," an industry insider here said. "Huawei seems to be getting desperate and looking to strengthen ties with Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese suppliers."

The first sign of the U.S. boycott hitting home was that prices of second-hand Huawei smartphones plunged. At British used-phone vendor musicMagpie on Sunday, a second-hand Huawei P30 Pro cost 100 pounds just one month after hitting store shelves, one-ninth the price of a new one, while the price of a second-hand Samsung Galaxy S10 Pro dropped less than 50 percent. In Singapore, a used P30 Pro costs only 100 Singaporean dollars.

Samsung is already swooping on Huawei users in Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia by offering discounts of up to 755 Singaporean dollars to Huawei users who turn in their phones and buy a Galaxy S10 instead.