The US and Huawei have been at loggerheads over multiple issues for some time now. Early last year, The Trump administration put Huawei on the U.S. Entity List. This means that Huawei can not do business with American companies. According to the U.S., Huawei is a threat to national security, and the company spies for the Chinese government. However, Huawei has since denied the allegations saying there is no proof to that effect. A couple of months ago, it appeared as though the U.S government was relaxing Huawei’s ban.
The U.S. granted certain American companies the license to do specific business with Huawei. This sparked speculations that Huawei’s ban will be completely lifted soon. However, that is not going to happen as the U.S. just extended Huawei’s ban by a year. This means that Huawei will still not do business with American companies until May 2021.
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Huawei will have to stick to HMS
The company will obviously not be able to use Google Mobile Services (GMS) and will have to stick with its alternative, HMS. Nevertheless, the ban did not deter the Chinese manufacturer from releasing multiple smartphones. It has two flagship series (Mate 30 and P40) without GMS and several other phones. In fact, its sales are pretty decent and it is nowhere near what people expected.
Furthermore, its sales in China have been pretty decent. However, its sales outside China have been badly hit. Although the company has its own HongMeng OS (Harmony OS) which comes with HMS, it will take many years to be on par with GMS.
Technically, the major problem for the Chinese manufacturer is Google Mobile Services. In the hardware end, Huawei already has a viable replacement for most aspects. In fact, about 70% of its phones now use its Kirin chips. With the U.S. now targetting TSMC, Huawei is now shifting its orders to SMIC. While its phone sales in Europe is suffering, its sales in China is stable.
