Google to pull Huawei’s Play Store access to comply with trade blacklist order
Mere days after Huawei was added to the U.S. Entities List by the Trump Administration, the company has been cut off by Google, losing access to Android updates and Play Store support for its devices. Neither Huawei of Google have released an official statement on the situation, but Reuters is reporting that all of Huawei’s global devices will “lose access” to the Play Store.
It’s not clear if this new restriction will apply to devices which are currently on the market or if it will only affect new smartphones and tablets going forward.
Huawei Technologies Co Ltd will immediately lose access to updates to the Android operating system, and the next version of its smartphones outside of China will also lose access to popular applications and services including the Google Play Store and Gmail app.
Since Android is Open Source, Huawei will still be able to use the operating system without any issues, but the company will be cut off from any services that Google offers to OEMs through its various licensing agreements. If Huawei smartphones that are currently on the market do lose access to the Play Store, Huawei will likely push out an update which would give users access to the same app store that the Chinese variants of their phones ship with. Google’s applications would still be out of reach to most, but there are plenty of workarounds to get those apps running without Play Store support.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on the situation to see how things progress. For the sake of the millions of consumers across the globe who own and use Huawei phones, we hope this situation can be resolved quickly without too many issues.
Source: Reuters