Soon after making news around the world, US has now decided to push the Huawei trade ban by another 90 days. So, the Chinese technology major has now another three months to sort out things on their own.
The US government blacklisted Huawei to do business in the US.
Interestingly, the company founder said that they already had something planned up. They knew something could happen like this someday, given most of the US businesses are banned in China.
According to the founder, the temporary license means very little to them. The company has a backup plan ready, and they have lesser things to worry about.
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Huawei Ban In US: What Happened?
Just a couple of days back, the US government imposed a ban on Chinese technology major Huawei. So, no US company can work with Huawei under such governmental restrictions. A day before, Google confirmed to be following the suite and said it will be withdrawing all paid Android software services with Huawei.
It came as a huge shock as all the Huawei smartphones currently run on the Android platform.
Currently the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world after Samsung, they would face a massive crisis worldwide without Google backing them.
The largest chip-making company in the world, Qualcomm also announced they would soon be cutting off all ties with Huawei. While they have a separate hardware chip-making division to handle the crisis, they don’t have a Google to replace the Android.
Huawei US Ban: So, Why Another 90 Days?
To minimise the disruption, the US government has now decided to delay the Huawei ban for 90 days. The Chinese Huawei can continue doing trade with US companies for the next 90 days including buying America-made products to maintain existing networks.
The temporary license allows the company to continue trade till until August 19.
Telecom operators can also trade Huawei’s equipments for the time being, but should be making the necessary arrangements by the given time. The extended temporary license allows the company to continue operations in US for existing Huawei mobile phone users.
But, Will This Solve The Software Problem?
No, it won’t. Until Huawei has a software mobile platform ready, the problems will keep piling up. Except for its home market in China, Google services are very popular all around the globe. So, wherever they choose to trade apart from China, they will need to provide these services, like Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and more.
It’s going to be really hard for the company to build a set of apps in line with the Google apps in such a short span of time.
Even if they do, customers won’t find the OS to be either compatible or user-friendly. Building a new OS which can compete against the likes of iOS or Android is going to take some good time, especially when your own EMUI platform is an amalgamation of the two.
The new license only allows Huawei to software updates to existing Huawei and Honor smartphones. The company will still not be able to buy American parts and components to manufacture new products without license approvals.
Finding Solutions: Huawei Has A Way Out?
The company founder Ren Zhengfei said that they were already prepared. They knew something like this could happen given the US-China trade relations. Huawei has said to be working on a separate platform for long, and already has made preparations for such a scenario.
If the company has a ready set of similar apps available built on a new mobile platform, things may get a bit easy for Huawei.
The rest now depends on how customers across the globe accept the new UI and platform. Europe, it’s second largest market after China is hugely popular for Google services, and even other Asian markets as well including India.
We need to wait until Huawei unveils its latest mobile platform, or how it chooses to deal with the situation.
For now, the US government has allowed the company some time, and they have good 90 days to sort the situation out.