Google still wants to do business with Huawei. That’s what we’re getting from recent talks. Google is rumored to be asking permission from the White House to work again with Huawei. We believe that is possible but we’re taking things with a pinch of salt for now. It hasn’t been a year since we shared with you the news that Google was cutting off some business with Huawei, no thanks to the efforts of the US government for a trade ban.
If you may remember, the decision of Google made other big brands to follow. Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Intel made a similar announcement. Google had to make sure then that services would still be available for existing Huawei devices. For a while though, the US temporarily eased some limits.
We thought Huawei’s future would be affected by the decision. There are certain ramifications but those didn’t stop the top Chinese mobile OEM from working hard on its own.
Huawei launched its own mobile OS–the Harmony OS (aka HongMeng OS). When the Huawei Mate 30 series was launched, it didn’t include a Google Play Store and Google Play Services. Instead, Huawei used its own Huawei Media Services and EMUI 9.1.
Huawei appears to be moving on. An executive of the company even said that they wouldn’t go back to Google. Huawei already has the AppGallery. Huawei has invited developers to publish their apps on AppGallery and now the OEM is claiming it is now the third-biggest app store in the world after the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.
Again, that is not impossible since there are millions of Huawei phones in the world today. That may even change since four Chinese mobile OEMs are now working on a Google Play Store alternative: Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo, and OPPO.
Should Google be worried? Maybe not yet but it certainly needs to watch out. And maybe rethink related decisions like blocking chip suppliers from Huawei?
