Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has confirmed that the US ban on using Android licence is hurting it badly.
‘The company hasn't been successful in finding replacements for Google apps such as Search and Maps, which are very popular on Android devices across the globe,’ Financial Times quoted a senior Huawei executive as saying.
‘There are so many Android users in Europe and south-east Asia. They're so used to these Google applications on top of Android phones. We can continue to use the Android platform since it is open-source, but we cannot use the services that help apps run on it,’ added Joy Tan, Vice President of Public Affairs at Huawei US.
In May, adhering to the order from the US Commerce Department, Google pulled Huawei’s Android license. The US Commerce Department has put Huawei on the ‘Entity List’ which is a list of companies that aren’t allowed to purchase technologies from US companies without the approval of the government. While a temporary licence was granted later, Huawei was only able to use the open-source code and would not have access to the all-important Play Store and Google apps.
Huawei recently announed its own operating system HarmonyOS. The Harmony OS 1.0 will be first adopted in Huawei’s smart screen products, which are due to launch later this year.
Despite the US-China trade war, Huawei reported 610.8 billion yuan ($86 billion) revenue during the first three quarters of this year, an increase of 24.4 per cent year-on-year, with a net profit margin of 8.7 per cent.
In September at a media interview, Huawei’s Consumer Business Head Richard Yu said that if the situation does not change with the US government, the company would start using its HarmonyOS.
Huawei recently launched the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro smartphones are the first devices from the company that do not come with Google’s Android OS. Both the smartphones are fuelled by the HiSilicon Kirin 990 mobile platform that the company announced recently.
