LLUIS GENE/AFP/Getty Image
Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company Huawei's CEO Richard Yu presents the new phone Huawei's P10 during a press conference on February 26, 2017 in Barcelona on the eve of the start of the Mobile World Congress. Phone makers will seek to seduce new buyers with even smarter Internet-connected watches and other wireless gadgets as they wrestle for dominance at the world's biggest mobile fair starting tomorrow.
- Huawei is the second-largest smartphone maker in the world, despite the fact that its products have not been popular in the United States.
- Huawei accounts for a notable portion of the smartphone market in Greater China, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
- But the company's future in the smartphone space remains unclear as Google has said it will no longer work with Huawei on future smartphones, although Huawei just caught a break after the US Commerce Department temporarily loosened its restrictions on the company to allow it to continue to provide updates to its existing US customers until August 19.
- After August 19th, these are the markets where customers will feel any changes from Huawei the most.
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Google has significantly scaled back its business with Huawei in a move that would prevent the Chinese tech behemoth from bringing Google's suite of popular services - including apps like the Play Store and Gmail - to its future smartphones. The decision also means that Google will no longer work with Huawei to provide Android system updates available to its smartphones, as Reuters first reported.
On Monday, however, Huawei caught a break when the US Commerce Department decided to allow the company to continue maintaining and providing updates to its existing US handsets until August 19. But whether Huawei will be able to maintain its position as a leader in the global smartphone market after that temporary license expires remains to be seen.
Although Huawei smartphones are difficult to find in the US, the company is the second-largest smartphone vendor in the world, coming in second only to Samsung. Huawei's biggest audience is in the Greater China region, where it represented 32.95% of smartphone shipments as of the first quarter of 2019, according to data that market research firm Canalys provided to Business Insider.
But it also has a sizable chunk of the smartphone market in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, as Huawei was responsible for 23.34% of smartphone shipments in the EMEA region during that same time period.
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Google's move comes after the US government placed Huawei on a trade blacklist that would require US companies to obtain government approval in order to work with the Chinese tech firm. Current Huawei smartphones will remain unaffected for now and will still have access to Google services like the Play Store, but Google will not collaborate with the company on future handsets.
Google will also not be able to issue software updates for any Huawei products after August 19, including the company's current smartphones, which means any future technical support for its phones will have to come from Huawei, not Google.
Huawei previously said that it has developed its own smartphone operating system to be used in place of Android, but the company has not divulged details on it just yet.
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