Last month Google revealed that the company can’t allow Huawei to ship the Mate 30 Pro with Google apps and services preinstalled, effectively banning new Huawei devices from key parts of Android like the Google Play Store.
And now Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei consumer products division has recently revealed onstage at a press event in Germany this morning that the company has been forced to drop Google’s Mobile Services (GMS) license on the Mate 30 series of devices.
Yu explained briefly: “We cannot use the Google Mobile Services core, we can use the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) core. Today that’s because of a US ban that these phones cannot preinstall the GMS core, it has forced us to use the HMS Core running the Huawei app gallery on the Mate 30 series phones.”
Google’s Play Store is an essential part of the company’s Google Mobile Services license, and it’s how the majority of Android-powered handsets outside of China get access to apps. Huawei can’t really work around this very easily, so instead, it’s simply building its own alternative to Google’s Play Store and associated services. Huawei is using $1 billion to fund development, user growth, and marketing of its own Huawei Mobile Services.
There are 45,000 apps already integrated with Huawei Mobile Services, but there will be many thousands more that will need to be tweaked and made available in Huawei’s App Gallery. It’s a big task to get developers to support its own app store, but the company has no other real alternative.
Still, there’s some hope that the US ban could eventually be reversed or Huawei could find a way around the restrictions. Reuters reports that Huawei will offer its own interface that will allow users to access some Google apps, but it’s not clear how many apps will be available or how Huawei even intends to achieve this.
