The media worldwide has been reporting on the issue with Huawei and its presence in the Western markets. The latest one comes from the company Facebook, which reportedly announced it will cease to allow the pre-installation of apps on Huawei smartphones. Facebook is just the latest one in the line of American companies to follow the official stand to ban any kind of co-operation with the Chinese company, due to, what-seem-to-be an espionage affair.
Facebook reportedly explained that it will be suspending all of its software and its deliverance to Huawei. It means that Huawei smartphones will not include FB apps as pre-installed, as well as WhatsApp and Instagram.
In addition to Facebook, Google has also followed the mentioned official ban, resulting in preventing the Chinese giant to access its services and software, hence no updates would be available for Huawei smartphones, with the chance of losing the access to Gmail and Google maps entirely.
Have the officials at Huawei expressed concern? Not yet. What we have seen so far is their hope that they would be allowed to continue using American services as usual. If not, they claim that they have developed their own operating system which would be launched if everything else fails. What is that “else”, it still remains to be seen. We can only assume that there are negotiations at the highest level going on, which will eventually result in a deal.
Changes for Huawei Users
From the regular user’s point of view, a smartphone is of no use if it cannot be updated regularly, to function properly. The users who are already in a possession of Huawei smartphones should not experience any difficulties, as the officials on both sides assured us. They claim that regular flow of information and use of various services and software will be secured. The information that slipped through almost unnoticeably is that Google, for example, will continue providing its services, because there was only a temporary reprieve last month from the US Commerce Department. There are no certain measures at this point and we can scarcely predict the outcome.
Two things are for sure. The first one is that this was definitely a big punch for Huawei to take. Blocking its 5G equipment and restricting the access to the US software would fall hard on anyone. However, so far, they seem to be holding on their own and developing strategies for the most unpredictable situation.
The second thing is that the campaign against Huawei is impacting the American companies as well. Namely, after the government added Huawei to the export blacklist, American companies which used to deal with the Chinese tech firm were found in an odd situation with the need to apply for a license in order to continue working as usual. Whether the process of acquiring licenses would run smoothly, we will see shortly.
Do you think that we are being spied upon via smartphones?