Huawei, despite the loss of Google apps and services is performing quite well. Its new smartphone, the Huawei Mate 30, already sold more than 1 million units. Moreover, it is to be noted that the phone is available in China only at the moment. The company is going to offer it Malaysia and other countries in the coming days and weeks. The sales are exceptional considering it does not offer most Google apps and services.
However, it remains to be seen whether the smartphone will be able to entice consumers outside China. Before the launch of the Mate 30, Huawei CEO Richard Yu hinted towards workarounds. The workarounds will allow people to manually install Google apps and services. For a while, it was true. In the days after the launch of the Mate 30, tech websites and forums were abuzz with methods to manually install Google Playstore and other apps.
But it seems the workarounds are no longer working. Google seems to have realized the workaround and pulled the plug. With access to Google apps and services completely blocked now, Huawei will have a hard time convincing consumers outside China to buy its products. It seems that the company is fully investing on its own app store, called AppGallery.
Huawei AppGallery and HarmonyOS
Also, Huawei is committing $1 billion to encourage developers to develop more apps for its store. It is also offering more lofty revenue sharing schemes to developers. Given Huawei’s dominance in China and other countries, developers will likely see it as a major attraction. Also, Huawei is likely to shift to its own operating system, HarmonyOS, by next year.
Currently, the Mate 30 is running on AOSP version of Android. Although Huawei has hinted that it would like to retain Android on its smartphones, it seems unlikely. US President Trump has refused to lift the ban on Huawei and even refused to make it a part of the ongoing trade negotiations between US and China.
At the same time, the US continues to pressurize its allies to not let Huawei set up 5G communication systems in their countries. It remains to be seen what the future holds for Huawei. Given the innovation of the Chinese tech giant and the resilience it is showing so far, Huawei may very well survive Trump’s wrath.
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