At a recent press conference in Vienna, the head of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group in Austria, Wang Fei, announced that the Chinese Tech Giant has no plans on going back to using Google Mobile Services (GMS) even if it regains the permission to do so. However, as soon as this started making headlines, the company issued a statement saying:
An open Android system and ecosystem is still our first choice. But if the US limits our use, we have the ability to develop our own operating system and ecosystem.
Announcing such a significant decision and then backtracking sends the impression that the company is unsure on the matter. In the statement released, where Huawei does not deny what Weng Fei said, it did not confirm it either.
Our first choice is the open Android ecosystem, including GMS (Google Mobile Services) — that was what helped us become number two in the world for smartphone shipments. As a result of the entity listing, we are now developing HMS (Huawei Mobile Services) — inviting app developers to come on board.
Since the China-US trade ban fiasco started, Huawei has been working on reducing its dependence on US-based companies.
Huawei was effectively banned from making any trade whatsoever with US-based firms without permission. Thanks to this, the company also lost the license to use Google Mobile Services (GMS) on all Huawei and Honor devices. Even though this does not affect Huawei’s operation in the local market, however, this has had an impact on Huawei sales in other markets around the world since GMS has become essential for Android phones around the world.