Following the US Government’s recent blacklisting of Chinese technology giant; Huawei, after concerns over national security, the company is losing its access to Google’s services including the Operating System; Android, as the company (Google), is registered in the United States. Reuters has confirmed that Google has halted conducting business, until further notice.
The report states; “The suspension covers any businesses that require the transfer of hardware and software products except those covered by open licenses,”.
This means that Google will no longer offer direct support to future Huawei devices neither will Google services be accessible on said devices, moving forward.
Consumers with current Huawei devices, should not be worried as they will continue to enjoy Google services. However, do not expect software updates from Google.
This leaves Huawei with access to AOSP which is the naked stripped down version of Android that is open source and sadly, lacks all the functionalities that Android users have come to love which include Google Play Store, Google Assistant and a collection of other Google services that have become synonymous with Android devices.
Chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm Inc, Intel Corp, Xilinx Inc and Broadcom Inc, have told their employees they will not supply critical software and components to Huawei until further notice.
This cut off by Google and other US Corporations, is the biggest blow to Huawei that could affect its international market and put its mobile business in trouble.
The impact to Huawei’s mobile sector, is however expected to be minimal in its home base; the Chinese market as most Google mobile apps are already banned in China. Several alternatives are currently being offered by domestic competitors such as Baidu and Tencent.
While Huawei’s mobile, laptop (because its Operating System; Windows, is provided by Microsoft) and server business have all been hit hard by the United States ban, there might be a silver lining.
Gadgets Africa, claims the company appears to have been well prepared for such a scenario and had put in place contingency plans with regards to software and hardware components, so as to ensure that everything remains, business as usual.
Huawei has reportedly been developing its own proprietary operating system since 2012 when the United States, first started investigating Huawei.
Huawei’s CEO; Richard Yu said; “We have prepared our own operating system, if it turns out we can no longer use these systems, we will be ready and have our plan B,”.
The company is believed to have alternative Operating Systems for both its mobile phones and laptops which as at the time of the ban, run on Android and Windows respectively.
Not long ago and before the ban, Huawei’s CEO also acknowledged that while the company would prefer to work with the softwares developed by Google and Microsoft, in the case of a total ban (which is now the case), the company would have its own software to fall back on.
We will bring you more information, as the story unfolds.
