Huawei has been one of the most prominent targets of the US in the China-US trade that has been going on for more than a year now. The feud between the two world economies has just gotten very hurtful for the Chinese tech giant Huawei. The company is the second-biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world and a massive 5G network equipment manufacturer. Despite Huawei’s great success, Google will no longer be conducting business with the company following Donald Trump’s Orders.
Also, Google is not the only US-based tech company that has closed its doors for Huawei. Giants like Intel, Xilinx, Broadcom, and Qualcomm have also suspended their business with the Chinese tech company. This action by American tech companies has been taken due to an executive order coming from the President of the US. In simple words, future Huawei smartphones will not be coming with Android OS or any of Google’s services.
The question remained that what would happen to Huawei’s smartphones that are already sold? Google confirmed in a tweet that those smartphones will continue using Google Play and Play Protect services. This means that all the future smartphones of Huawei are affected by this significant event. We can be sure that this is not the end of the China-US Trade War.
Xilinx produces programmable chips, Intel manufactures server chips and Broadcom supplies switching ICs to Huawei. All of these companies and their products combine together to help Huawei retain its spot as the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world along with being one of the major tech and networking equipment provider in the industry. According to a report by Reuters, industry experts are questioning Huawei’s ability to sustain its needs without the support of these companies. No official comments have surfaced since the action was taken.
Impacts of China-US Trade War
The recent events are surely going to put Huawei in a seriously compromising position. Huawei had planned to become the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer by the year 2021. Closing down of the US market, as well as businesses with US companies being suspended, could cause Huawei to seriously damage its ongoing progress for that goal.
All of this means that Huawei’s devices will not be running on Android anymore. Huawei will ship its smartphones to the world like it ships in Chine. Essential applications like Google Maps, Chrome, Gmail and Calendar will not be available in its devices. The most important Google service in this regard is the Google Play Store. The Play Store is arguably the largest applications library in the tech world and losing it will cause Huawei quite some damage.
While Huawei surely has backup plans in place as well as its own app store ready for situations like these, it is very hard to be about a global change i.e shifting the majority from Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store to Huawei’s own app store. Huawei will have to place extremely effective strategies to attract app developers whose efforts will then attract customers. Regardless of that, it will be interesting to see how Huawei or China as a whole responds to this event.
