President Donald Trump earlier last week signed an executive order that immediately placed Huawei on the Commerce Department’s so-called Entity List, and that effectively means the Chinse firm can’t transact with U.S. companies without obtaining government approval.
While the ban is mostly targeted at Huawei’s 5G ambition, the ban obviously will have a far-reaching effect on the company. Huawei’s HiSilicon chip company in its initial reaction to the ban earlier last week said it was well prepared for the worst case scenario and has since started building backup tools precisely for this kind of contingency.
Expectedly, US firms are expected to cut ties with the Chinse firm, and Alphabet Inc’s Google might be the first to throw in the big blow if a recent report is any indication. Reuters report that Alphabet Inc’s Google has cut ties with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware and software products except those covered by open source licenses.
Gizchina News of the week
If the report is accurate, it could mean Huawei will immediately lose access to updates to the Android operating system, and the next version of its smartphones outside of China will also lose access to popular applications and services including the Google Play Store and Gmail app.” Words from unnamed source suggest the software giant is still pondering on how it could have a soft landing with Huawei, while the chinse firm is reportedly accessing the impact of the U.S. Commerce Department’s actions.
The Chinese firm has assured fans and customers Worldwide that it is on top of the issue, having some backup tools in place, but whether or, not these unknown tools which could be its own OS will immediately appeal to customers remains to be known.
