Huawei keeps wowing and takes up the US fight on the app front
• Chinese company launches latest devices amid US-Sino tensions and coronavirus anxieties
Another week, another tech event and another folding device to hit the market, but it is definitely not business as usual out there: US-China political strife and the coronavirus are two factors contributing to a degree of uncertainty in the tech sphere.
In fact, the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona has been cancelled this year, as several big name brands started dropping out of the line-up over coronavirus fears. It might just be the virus’s first corporate casualty, but it is unlikely to be its last.
Having flaked on MWC, Huawei hosted its own media conference and launch of its latest devices on Monday, where the media and consumers were introduced to the folding Huawei Mate Xs: a phone-tablet hybrid that is more phablet than phablets have ever been.
It also launched the MatePad Pro (5G) and an updated Matebook X Pro. There are some serious specs and processing power in these devices. I won’t go into too much detail here (read the various reviews that will inevitably follow), but these devices make it clear that Huawei is still a contender for making top-end devices, with top-end prices. For example, the Mate Xs, with 8GB RAM and 512GB storage, will retail at about €2,499. There’s no word on local pricing yet, but if this were directly converted at the current exchange rate it would burn a R41,000-shaped hole in your pocket. That’s a bundle from a company that traditionally offers comparative devices at competitive devices.
Not in the line-up at this week’s event was the flagship P-series, which is due to launch in late March at a dedicated event in Paris. The P-series devices are crowd pleasers with exceptional photographic capabilities. They have been competing directly with flagship Samsungs and iPhones for a few years now, and I sincerely doubt the latest in the range will skimp on anything.
But there is a Donald Trump-shaped cloud hanging over these launches. Yes, the P40 will not launch with Google Mobile Services (GMS) because of the dreaded “entity list” scandal, which in 2019 led to a US government ban on US companies trading with Huawei.
If you didn’t follow this story, the ban is due to spying paranoia on the part of the Trump administration, and means Google apps work on Huawei devices already in the market from before the ban (mid-2019), but not those launched since. The company’s devices still run an open-source version of the popular Android operating system (for now), but that is without the critical Google Play Store.
Huawei’s solution was the development and launch of Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) and app gallery. HMS offers alternatives to popular apps. For example, you can link your Gmail account to a third-party e-mail app to get your e-mail, but you can’t download Google’s own Gmail app. The “log in using Google” option (which makes for easy app sign-up) is gone for these new devices. This also affects other US companies such as Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, and Instagram.
There have been various workarounds, but Google has recently reiterated its warning to customers that “sideloading” their apps might open users up to threats. In a statement last week it said: “Google is prohibited from working with Huawei on new device models or providing Google’s apps, including Gmail, Maps, YouTube, the Play Store and others for preload or download on these devices.”
“The Google Play Store, Google Play Protect and Google’s core apps [including Gmail, YouTube, Maps and others] are only available on Play Protect certified devices,” which now excludes new Huawei devices, the statement explains.
With the launch of HMS Huawei has embarked on an aggressive app development strategy that includes incentivising developers to create apps for the alternative app repository. In January it hosted a developer day in London and announced investment to the tune of $26m, as well as promising developers a bigger slice of app revenue than that paid to developers by Apple and Google.
Potentially, this could lead to a third “centre of power” in the app universe. After all, Huawei has a huge reach, shipping 240million phones (including 7-million 5G phones) in 2019. In fact, Huawei’s statements emphasised that it is not expecting to be overly hurt by the US moves, and indeed, in 2019 its SA sales grew 22% despite the dire news.
So this isn’t David vs Goliath necessarily. Still, I struggle to picture the world without Google’s dominance over web services. A clearer picture of the ramifications — on the local and global markets — may emerge when the P40 range hits stores.
IT MIGHT JUST BE THE VIRUS’S FIRST CORPORATE CASUALTY, BUT IT IS UNLIKELY TO BE ITS LAST