Huawei is being locked out of Android after suspended business relationships with Google. This comes as a result of the USA’s trade ban on the China-based smartphone manufacturer.
The ban came as a result of the year-long US-China trade war, in which Huawei has been being used as a major bargaining chip. According to CNN, restrictions of the ban have seen a slight lift for “rural American network providers that use Huawei equipment.”
The suspended business relationship between Huawei and Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., means that hardware and software transfers between the two companies, as well as a partnership on the Android operating system, will cease.
Apps like Google Play have to have a legal relationship in place in order to run on Android, despite being an open-source software that anyone can use.
In recent years, Huawei has been growing exponentially. According to Business Insider, in the first quarter of 2019 59.9 million smartphones were shipped from China to be sold internationally.
On Monday, May 20, Huawei South Africa told Business Insider that if its local market share trails that of the global market share, then an estimated 2.5 million smartphones would have been sold in 2018. However, it was unable to divulge local sales figures.
Google and Huawei’s suspended relationship will not have any immediate repercussions. This is how Huawei users will be affected for the time being:
– Nothing will change on the P20 or P30 in the near future
– Google confirmed that Huawei devices currently in use will have access to Google Play in the meantime
– Critical security patches and app updates will still be rolled out for the time being
– Users will not see an impact on Google Play, so long as the app is functioning normally
– There will be no YouTube, Google Maps or Gmail for new Huawei phones as there will be no access to Google Play on new devices
– Security updates at a system level for phones outside of China were delivered by the Google-Huawei partnership. The suspension of this relationship means a suspension on the delivery of security updates, meaning that security fixes from Google will not be available to current Huawei devices
– Huawei phones will not be receiving the Android Q update anytime soon
– Huawei could stop supporting Google Play apps on its current devices, if future access is cut off, eventually making them unusable.
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