Huawei may not return to Google services if and when the trade ban is lifted

Huawei have had a rough time as of late but even with all the Entity List hassles they continue to grow and increase their market share. So confident that Huawei are with the product they have created in their banned state that they are now saying they may not use Google services again even if they are allowed to.

Huawei have hinted that in the future they do not want to be beholden to any particular country and have wanted to remove their reliance on any one particular country. In keeping with that at a press conference in Vienna on Thursday the country manager for Austria, Fred Wangfei, said that “Huawei will no longer return to Google services even if the US should lift the trade ban”.

Huawei’s aim is to create a third smartphone ecosystem which will be based on Android but will “follow the original from Google in the long term in order to guarantee compatibility”. What this means is unclear but we expect they will fork Android so that the apps created for Android will also work on their platform.

Huawei have since said that their first choice is still “an open Android ecosystem” which to me is NOT a walking back of their statement. They just want to build their own Android-based ecosystem. There is no mention in the statement about going back to Google services, just Android.

An open Android ecosystem is still our first choice, but if the US doesn’t let us use it, we have the opportunity to develop one ourselves.

Just as a note for others who read this. There was no wiggle room in what Huawei told me, I asked them several times (as I was rather surprised myself) and they insisted on not going back to Google – even if the US ban falls.

— Andreas Proschofsky (@suka_hiroaki) January 30, 2020

This all comes among some good news for Huawei where the UK announced that they will be allowed to build part of its 5G network along with the EU announcing that no manufacturer would be excluded from the 5G build out. Makes you wonder why our government jumped so quickly to make a decision without a proper investigation.

Huawei at the same time received the news from Counterpoint Research
that they have officially overtaken Apple for the number two spot on the Global smartphone shipments list YoY. Apple saw a decrease from 14% to 13% and Huawei, even with the ban, saw an increase from 14% to 16$. Samsung sits first still at 20%, but you can expect them to be concerned with Huawei’s continued growth even with their hobbled market.

These sales are on the back of their dominance of the Chinese market with a growth of 35% in China, now holding 38.5% of the market — that’s a large share of the world’s largest market.

The future seems to be looking bright for Huawei, much brighter than we thought it did back when the ban was announced. If they do decide not to go back to Google services it will be interesting to see just how they fork their own Android OS and how compatible it is with Google’s Android.

Would you buy a Huawei phone if the ban was lifted and you were still able to use Gmail etc on it (assuming Google make a Gmail app available to their App Store)?