As you probably already know, the USA has been warning pretty much everyone that Huawei is spying on us and we should avoid them. Well, now the American government banned American companies from doing business with Huawei and that includes Google as well.
Could this be the end of Huawei? Well, let's dig deeper into it.
First Steps
The first warnings from the USA about Huawei came out about a year ago where FBI Director Chris Wray mentioned that the US is worried about the Chinese tech giants. Mostly because they are gaining positions within their telecommunications network and because, well, they are foreign.
To put it word by word: " The government is deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks. This provides the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage".
Now, at that time, all of these claims were groundless. No proof had been provided about Huawei spying on us and giving information on the Chinese government. In fact, Huawei has passed all security tests with flying colors. And every time that a security flaw was detected, Huawei would quickly fix it.
Still, the US didn't stop there. Apart from warning their citizens about the dangers that Huawei posed, they also went ahead and talked about it to the EU as well. They even went as far as to claim that they wouldn't work with anyone who has any ties with Huawei.
This whole story kept on going for a long time - until the past few days where everything escalated and now things are looking really bad.
The Ban And What It Means
As we mentioned in the beginning, it was last week where the US government officially banned American companies from doing any business with Huawei. This includes Intel, Qualcomm, and Google.
That is a HUGE deal. First of all, the fact that Google has suspended business with Huawei means that we can no longer get the latest updates. Existing phones will keep on receiving support for the next 90 days. But, with Google being unable to do any business, the future isn't looking so bright.
Now, with that being said, Huawei still has access to the AOSP project, which should work fine. After all, most of the custom ROMs that are out there are based on it. Chances are that it'll keep the company behind in terms of timely updates, but, we'll see.
Still, Google's apps will still not be available which is another issue. This includes the Play Store as well, so, yeah.
The Future Of Huawei
Even if everything goes well with the AOSP, there is still the huge issue of Qualcomm. Most of our smartphones nowadays are based on Qualcomm's chipsets and that includes Huawei.
Now, they do have their own chipset as well, which is called Kirin - and all of their latest smartphones are based on it. But, let us not forget about other minor components as well.
The problems seem to have already started as Huawei has been kicked out from the Android Q beta program. Ouch.
According to our sources, instead of relying on AOSP, the company is planning on developing its own OS. Rumors about the name of it are already out with most of them calling it "Project Z". Other rumors are saying that it'll be launched by this fall or next spring, but, we'll see.
But, wait, there's MORE. Even if Huawei makes its own OS and it ends up doing well, let us not forget that numerous apps like Facebook, Instagram, and pretty much every Google app are still based in the US and thus are unlikely to become available on Huawei's app store.
Conclusion
So, when everything is said and done, is this the end for Huawei? Maybe. They really are facing very tough times at the moment.
While a big part of both their hardware and software were delivered from 3rd parties, they'll now have to make almost everything on their own. Samsung tried to do something similar with Tizen OS and we all know how that turned out for them.
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