Update: After a day of speculations and concerns over the future of Huawei and their consumers. The US Department of Commerce has temporarily uplifted the ban on trade with Huawei to help the company serve its consumers without any disruption and let the company prepare for tough times ahead.
The license is uplifted till August 19, 2019, to help Huawei continue to serve its customers during the time of migration. The temporary license uplift means that Huawei will be able to work with Google, Intel, Qualcomm and other companies which had to stop working with Huawei, as a result of trade blacklist with the company.
Original Story: In a surprise move, Google has halted its business operations with Huawei, one of the leading mobile phone manufacturers in the world, effective immediately — a report by Reuters notes. The halted business streams include anything in relation to the transfer of hardware and software products except the open source ones. If accurate, this can send shockwaves across the world and massively impact Huawei users and businesses all over the world.
According to Reuters,
“Huawei Technologies Co Ltd will immediately lose access to updates to the Android operating system, and the next version of its smartphones outside of China will also lose access to popular applications and services including the Google Play Store and Gmail app,”
See Also: Huawei sub-brand Honor cuts smartphones’ prices as part of Ramadan offer
Last Thursday, Trump administration had added Huawei in their trade blacklist and owing to that it will be extremely difficult for Huawei to do business with US companies. Google is one of the US companies with the highest number of consumers in the world using its open-source operating system Android.
See Also: 5 reasons why halting Android license for Huawei is Google’s own loss
The move will put the users of Huawei smartphones in limbo, they won’t be able to get any new Android updates, security patches and even will lose access to Google Play Store which makes a huge portion of Android phone experience. The list of smartphones includes the recently launched high-end flagships of Huawei including P30, P30 Pro, Mate 20 Pro, and the list continues.
See also: In a shocking move, Intel and Qualcomm also cut off Huawei
Huawei, in just the recent quarter of 2019, shipped more than 59 million smartphones which makes a huge chunk of devices powered by Android Operating System. A source closer to the matter mentions that Google was forced to end ties with Huawei as a result of trade blacklisting of Huawei in the US. Otherwise, Huawei was expected to become the biggest seller of Android-powered devices in the world beating Samsung and other Chinese smartphone manufacturers by a good margin.
Huawei will continue to have access to the licensed open source version of the Android operating system, which is available for everyone to use.
See also: How Huawei business ban by Google will impact its smartphone users
Huawei has said,
“Huawei has made substantial contributions to the development and growth of Android around the world. As one of Android’s key global partners, we have worked closely with their open-source platform to develop an ecosystem that has benefitted both users and the industry.
Huawei will continue to provide security updates and after-sales services to all existing Huawei and Honor smartphone and tablet products covering those that have been sold or still in-stock globally.
We will continue to build a safe and sustainable software ecosystem, in order to provide the best experience for all users globally.”
But in a recent interview to a Japenese publication Nikkei, Huawei’s CEO Ren had mentioned, “Huawei’s growth might slow under the U.S. restriction, but only slightly.”
The recent move by Google is going to change the power game between different smartphone manufacturers but only time will tell how Chinese smartphone companies and Chinese establishment will react and respond over this.
Update – 1:36 pm PST: Huawei has given an official statement on this development and the story has been edited to reflect that.
Update – 9:57 am PST: Google has gone on to Twitter to give an update on halting the license of Android for Huawei. The update mentions that the current Android phones will continue to have access to Google services and applications. It means that the upcoming devices of Huawei will be impacted as a result of this development.
For Huawei users’ questions regarding our steps to comply w/ the recent US government actions: We assure you while we are complying with all US gov’t requirements, services like Google Play & security from Google Play Protect will keep functioning on your existing Huawei device.
— Android (@Android) May 20, 2019
