Extract from the Irish Time
“Don’t tell me I’ve just been caught up in Donald Trump’s trade war with China? Um, well, sort of. If you have a Huawei phone, then we have some bad news for you. But we also have some good news.
Can we start with the bad news? Right so. Last Thursday US president Donald Trump added the Chinese phone maker to a trade blacklist and said US companies would be restricted from doing business with it. Then, on Monday, Google said it would enact restrictions on Android updates to Huawei. Huawei, like other phone makers, use Google’s Android phone eco system.
What does that mean? “We are complying with the [Trump] order and reviewing the implications,” a Google spokesman said. Meanwhile, sources within Google made it very clear Huawei would only be able to use the public version of Android and would be denied access to proprietary apps and services from Google.
At the risk of repeating myself, what does that mean? It means Google will deny Huawei access to some of the most basic features that make phones smart including its Play Store, where you get your apps, and its own apps including Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube.
Hang on, so I won’t be able to use Gmail on my phone and will have to ask people for directions like someone from the 1900s? Steady on. This is where we come to the good news. Nothing bad has happened yet. Google has made it clear that people who already own Huawei products will still be able to access all the Google functions and its security software will continue to work as normal. Huawei also said it would continue to provide security updates and services for its smartphones and tablets. That means that the hundreds of thousands of Irish people who own a Huawei device are grand.”
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