Following President Trump issuing a ban that prevented US companies from doing business with companies like Huawei, question was how would the dominoes fall?
Google announced they will no longer be supporting Huawei phones with updates, Google Play and Services, and with their app store (Google Play). This put current and future Huawei phones in a conundrum as the software is the backbone of their devices. Loosing the software will be a potential crippling blow.
Reportedly Huawei has been game planning for this and have been working on their own operating system for a few years now. So they can still provide customers with an experience outside of android.
But building an app store from the ground takes a lot of time. Other companies have tried and have not been able to have as much success as they hoped. Samsung, arguably the largest android supplier, backed off of their claim to move to phones to Tizen after attempting to build their own os and play store. We also saw Windows make a strong attempt back in 2010-2011 only to fall short as well. So it will be interesting to see where Huawei will be able to go from here.
Right after Google’s announcement, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Intel announced that they will no longer support Huawei. This means the manufacturer will either have to look to another manufacturer or build their chipsets in house. Huawei has reportedly stockpiled enough chips to go three months, but if the ban continues, they will have to figure something else out.
For customers outside of the US, this move is controversial, and people have been vocal of their anger towards Google. Though I will not comment one way or another my opinions on the Huawei ban (as I do not want to get political in my posts), I do wonder what will happen to fans of the hardware manufacturer. Though in the US our big 3 manufacturers were Samsung, Apple, and Google, around the rest of the world Huawei was a top hardware manufacturer for them. Huawei challenged the smartphone market with a number of innovations and devices that rivaled the best. In fact one could argue had Huawei had the same carrier backing (in the US) as some of the other hardware manufacturers, they would easily be among the top three.
For many of us in the US the move will not effect us, as majority of us did not use their phones. But I will say that the impact on the community as a whole could mean one less hardware partner to add innovation to the market. Customers outside of the US who own Huawei phones will still have functioning services like Google Play and Security, according to an @android Twitter post.
