Last week on Wednesday, May 15, 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump declared a national emergency preventing foreign countries from any future imports from the U.S. without federal approval. Huawei was added to the U.S. Department of Commerce"s "Entity List", which essentially banned the Chinese company from buying any components and materials from American companies without approval from the US government. Now, a source close to the matter has informed Reuters that Google has "suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware and software products except those covered by open source licenses."
According to the report, Google will drop support for all future Huawei smartphones outside China, including services such as Google Play Store and Google"s email application, Gmail. Additionally, Huawei will no longer receive Android updates effective immediately. If true, this move from the Mountain View-based tech goliath will have a major impact on Huawei.
While Huawei will still be able to access the open source version of Android, said source, Google will not provide any technical support for the open source license version of Android or Google services neither will it participate in any joint ventures or partnerships in the future. According to the source, Google is still working out the specifics regarding its services and other details such as which ones it will continue to provide or discontinue.
At this point, the future might look a little bleak for the Chinese smartphone manufacturer. However, it might not turn out to be as bad as you think. In March, a representative of the company revealed that Huawei had a backup system in case things went south. The company built its own operating systems, to be used only in "extenuating circumstances" such as inability to license Android or Windows. If Google"s terms come into play, Huawei will not be entirely unprepared.
On Friday, a Huawei representative said that the company"s attorneys are "studying the impact" of the new rules placed by the U.S. Department of Commerce. As of right now, officials from Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and the Commerce Department haven"t made any further comments on the matter.
Update: Google has issued a statement on Twitter as a response to the cutoff decision. The Alphabet Inc. subsidiary has announced that while it will comply with the rules put in place by the U.S. government, existing Huawei devices will still be able to access services such as Google Play and Google Play Protect.
The U.S. Commerce Department and Huawei have not made any further comments.