What’s Next: Huawei Losing Access to Google Services (Update: Intel & Qualcomm Cutting Off Supplies to Huawei)

It was just last week when the US President, Donald Trump, announced that Huawei is now under its Entity List. Which means US companies are not allowed to do business with Huawei without the government’s approval. This morning, the world has been shocked by the Reuter’s exclusive news where Google is pulling Huawei’s access to Google Services.

What Huawei lose access to?

The news stated Google has suspended some business with Huawei especially with Google’s proprietary hardware and software product support. The exception, of course, is those covered by open source licenses such as the AOSP Android itself.

Basically, Huawei’s future phones will not be able to use Google’s proprietary services – including Google Play Store, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts and anything that requires the Play Services Framework. While some news has stated Huawei will lose Android entirely which is false as they still have access to the AOSP Android, the vanilla Android without any Google Play Services. That means no Google Play Store, just like any of those native China phones.

Who cares? Huawei still has AppGallery

Yes, in fact, that’s how AOSP Android flourished in mainland China. They have their own app stores and Chinese app developers would just focus on providing to their own market. There are tonnes of private app stores available out there for Android if you absolutely hate Google Play Store. Some of them even offer the modded application for whatever purpose it is not intended to use as. Nonetheless, what you ultimately lose here is the Google Play Protect which scans the apps for malicious codes which third-party app store may not be able to provide.

It is not affecting existing Huawei devices, yet

“We are complying with the order and reviewing the implications,”
“For users of our services, Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices,”

Google spokesperson

As of now, Google’s spokesperson has stated that the existing Huawei devices will not be affected by the ban. Huawei users will still continue to get all the updates and security protection from Google Play Protect. Huawei, on the other hand, will continue to get Android security updates through the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

How exactly this whole fiasco will play out remains to be known as the details are still being discussed internally at Google. There are possibilities that even the existing Huawei phones may lose access to future updates since they need to be certified for Play Services access. Leaving current users in limbo.

Update #1: Intel & Qualcomm are cutting off supplies to Huawei. According to Bloomberg, chipmakers including Intel Corp., Qualcomm Inc., Xilinx Inc. and Broadcom Inc. have been informing their employees to stop their chip supply to Huawei until further notice. The company has reportedly stockpiling for at least 3 months in preparation for this ban.

Update #2: US Department of Commerce Gives Huawei a 90 days temporary license for their product to work with Google. That said, the actual ban will only take effect on 19th August 2019 onwards. Give or take, at least the company now has 3 months to prepare for the next direction. Depends on how long the company would need to make any sort of announcement, the consumer, however, will now be left in this weird situation where they might entirely skip Huawei’s devices.

*Updating*