Introduction
What can easily be called the biggest shocker to the smartphone sector is the US government’s executive order, signed directly by President Donald Trump himself, that banned Huawei from receiving services from any American company associated with it. This order, though signed on May 16th, has shown its quick impact, and it’s a huge blow to the Chinese tech giant.
The implications of this order have started to come to light. In the hardware industry, Qualcomm is expected to suspend its contract with Huawei, and Panasonic has hinted towards the same. However, the biggest hit is coming from the king of smartphone OS, Android. Owned by Google, Android OS lays the foundation of the majority of smartphones around the world. And if Google really part ways with Huawei, it’s going to be enormously intractable for the second largest smartphone company in the world to hold its grasp for long.
So, what exactly does it mean for us, as users in India, or Huawei users around the world? Let’s break this news down and discuss everything separately to get a better idea of the complete situation and how it’s going to impact Huawei, as well as Honor, users globally.
The US Government’s Executive Order
On May 16th, 2019, the United States Government passed an executive order that seeks to ban Huawei from making all trade contracts with the US industries. The reason cited for this ban is the potential security threats relating to privacy in Huawei phones. In fact, all US government institutions had already been directed to restrict the use of Huawei phones for government operations.
These security threats have been linked to the Chinese government’s taking direct advantage of US citizen’s privacy, as stated in the executive order signed by President Trump.
We can’t comment on these allegations at the moment. However, an alternate explanation for this ban has to do with the increasing popularity of Huawei phones in the US market. With the two economic mammoths fighting tooth and nail to gain their dominance in the international market, it was surely expected that things would escalate in the coming days, and they didn’t let us down!
US Companies Parting Ways With Huawei
As soon as the executive order was passed, companies in the states have already started to say goodbye the Chinese company with the immediate effect.
Panasonic is the latest to ‘suspend transactions’ with Huawei, as declared in their latest tweet. Additionally, Qualcomm is expected to end its ties as well and would stop producing chipsets for Huawei in the coming days. However, the hardest hit is coming directly from the backbone of the modern-day IT industry, Google, or in a more understandable way, the operating system Android. Yes, Google has specified that it would stop releasing any updates for Huawei smartphones in the coming future. If the executive order is not reversed in the coming days (let’s hope it does), then the future of Huawei is in grave danger.
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How Can Huawei Get Out Of This Mess?
While things do seem to be going against Huawei from every corner, the leading smartphone company is not planning on giving up, not after acquiring the position of one of the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, second only to Samsung. It does seem like it’s going to be one of the hardest jobs to pull off, but according to inside sources, Huawei had been anticipating something like this at least three months from today.
One area where Huawei is attempting to become self-sustainable is in the field of processors. To be fair, Huawei doesn’t rely even on Qualcomm for its high-end variants. The chipsets in most top-tier smartphones are already using in-house processors.
Other than that, Google won’t just give up on a brand with so many users globally right away. With the rising concern among the Huawei owners, Google released a statement about the whole situation and assured a 90 day period before it takes any further actions. In the meantime, Huawei is constantly trying to turn the tides from its end. It’s been reported that they are in talks with Aptoid, a platform similar to Google Play that offers all the android apps from the app store. Since Android is open source, this is not going to cause any problems for Huawei phones, if things go south somehow.
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Should The Current Huawei and Honor Users Panic About This?
Short answer, yes. To where it stands today, things could either stay the same or they could get really worse for Huawei’s customers in the foreseeable future. The biggest issue is, again, with the Google updates. Even if Huawei manages to strike a deal with Aptoid, it’s still not going to stop Google from sending OS updates for the Huawei smartphones. We’re not sure how they are going to fight this, but it does look like there’s something to worry about for the current users. And this is not just about customers in the US. Android OS, used across the globe, is directly owned by Google, and the order is going to affect everyone remotely involved with Huawei. Let’s hope the US Government and Huawei come to terms in the coming 90 days.