Millions to be hit as Google cuts Android support to Huawei

PARIS: Hundreds of millions of smartphone users will be affected by Google’s decision to sever its Android operating system ties with Chinese handset maker Huawei.

The decision, in the midst of a United States trade war with China, means that Huawei users will start losing access to Google’s proprietary services such as Gmail and Maps, and be shut out of future upgrades to Android on their phones. The move by the California internet giant on the software front was compounded by news that US chipmakers have stopped supplying Huawei, hitting the hardware of its phones.

Huawei sold nearly 203 million phones last year, up from 150 million in 2017, according to data tracking firm Gartner, overtaking Apple to threaten Samsung atop the global charts.

For the first quarter of 2019, before its recent run-in with US President Donald Trump’s administration, Huawei sold 59 million handhelds.

Those users risk losing access to important upgrades to Android released by Google in future, although for now Huawei said it would continue to provide security updates.

The Chinese company will only be able to access software patches and distribute them from Android’s open source project, not proprietary information retained by Google, meaning that apps on Huawei phones could become unusable.

NO EASY FIX

To get around the Google ban, Huawei would ultimately have to build its own operating system (OS), as Apple has for its iphones. That cannot be done in a hurry.

Microsoft offers a salutary example. Between 2010 and 2017, the US company tried to entice users to buy phones built on its own Windows mobile operating system. But the phones never took off and the company pulled the plug on the OS.