An explosive report in Reuters claims that Google has suspended business with Huawei following its blacklisting by the U.S. government. If true, this could mark the end of Huawei’s smartphone and smart devices business.

“Google has suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware and software products except those covered by open source licenses, a source close to the matter told Reuters on Sunday, in a blow to the Chinese technology company that the U.S. government has sought to blacklist around the world,” the Reuters report claims.

As a result, Huawei will lose access to Android updates immediately. Future Huawei smartphones and devices will not be able to provide the Google Play Store or Google’s core smartphone apps like Gmail, Maps, and Calendar. And Google will no longer support its Android apps and services for the firm.

“Details of the specific services were still being discussed internally at Google, according to the source,” the report continues.

It appears that Huawei will only have access to the open source parts of Android, which is called AOSP (Android Open Source Project), going forward. This will effectively kill its smartphones and related efforts, which rely especially on the Google Play Store, Google’s app store.

This is problematic on a number of levels, unless you’re Samsung or Apple, I guess: Huawei was poised to leapfrog Samsung to become the number one smartphone maker in the world sometime this coming year. And it already makes the best smartphones in the world: Its latest flagship, the Huawei P30 Pro, has the single highest-rated smartphone, with 5x optical zoom and unparalleled picture quality.

Tagged with Huawei