It takes
literally ages for any start-up to make their mark and make a name in the
Industry that they belong to, similar is the case with Huawei, the China based
technology start-up that was founded in the 1980’s. Huawei is currently the
second largest name in the Technology world, and they are accounted for the
most innovative and bleeding edge Technology that we find around ourselves
ranging from the Quad Camera implementation, to the Punch-Hole selfie camera
phones. Not many know that even Google reached out to Huawei for making their
last smartphone under Nexus line-up the Nexus 6P a reality, which was later
known as the Huawei Nexus 6P.
The Ban
Recently
something happened, something so big that hindered the fast-paced growth of the
Chinese Tech Giant and also threatened its very existence in the Smartphone
industry. On 15th of May 2019, Mr. Donald Trump, the President of the United
States of America and his administration added Huawei to the U.S. Department of
Commerce’s Entity List via an Executive Order and blacklisted it from any operations
in the United States of America, and with this order the events that followed
were catastrophic for Huawei. Let’s take a look at what Exactly happened
following the order of the Trump Administration.
On the 19th
of May, Google, the developers of the highest running Mobile platform Android
confirmed their stand regarding the order passed by U.S administration stating
that they would obey the order, and on the 20th of May, Intel and Qualcomm, two
of the leading processor and SoC manufacturers joined Google in following the
U.S administration orders.
Aftermath
With all
this ongoing activity, stress and turmoil rising amongst Huawei fans and its
users was obvious, Huawei officially stated that they would keep on providing
official support to the existing smartphones and tablets under the brand of
Huawei and Honor (Sister Concern of Huawei), they also confirmed that they are
working on developing a new mobile operating system to power their smartphones.
“China supports Chinese companies defending their legitimate rights according
to laws,” said Lu Kang, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
to CNN. “In terms of what measures either Chinese companies or
Chinese government would take, please wait and see.” On the same day i.e.
20th of May, Trump administration issued a 90-day reprieve on Huawei allowing
it to continue its business for the existing products, and making the ban
applicable on 19th of August 2019.
On the 22nd
of May, Huawei received a fatal blow to their ongoing struggle, when British
chip manufacturing company ARM joined the list of companies blacklisting
Huawei, which meant that would be deprived of using ARM technology in their SoC
cores. Even with all the flak around, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Company (Parent Concern of MediaTek Chipsets Ltd.) said that they would
continue to do business with Huawei.
Tech
Consortiums such as the SD Association, the Wi-Fi Alliance and JEDEC also
delisted and barred Huawei from business, complying to the orders, soon after
the U.S administrations decisions. However, these consortiums did not take long
to relist the Chinese tech Giant back as a member.
Meanwhile,
Huawei made a statement to the Bloomberg that they wouldn’t support bans of
American Companies by the Chinese Government, nor impose any themselves. Huawei
also issued a legal motion stating that the orders of the U.S administration
were against the U.S constitution. Along with all this going on, the Chinese
administration also made a statement mentioning about an Entity list, which
would consist of American companies, and Huawei Employees were ordered not to
attend any U.S meetings.
Fightback
Huawei was
not going to be dormant while all this flak was being thrown at them,
and on the 6th of June, they finally announced that they would soon be in
the works of building a 5G network for Russia’s biggest carrier. Meng Wenzhou,
Huawei’s CFO stated that she would fight the U.S to stay in Canada, but this
moment of joy didn’t last very long, as Facebook stated that they would be
complying with the order and would not allow Huawei to ship their phones with
their apps pre-installed i.e. WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, etc. On the 10th
of June, renowned mobile development and news portal XDA reported that Huawei
was building an App Store of their own named App Gallery and that they were in
talks with Android Developers to port their apps for App Gallery.
Huawei on
the 12th of June officially expressed their ambition of becoming the first
largest manufacturer of smartphones by the fourth quarter would take longer
than claimed earlier, and they filed a trademark application for HongMeng OS in
9 countries if not more, though it is still unclear whether will it be HongMeng
or Oak OS. It was also reported that though Huawei is developing their
proprietary OS, they are also looking at Russia’s Linux based Sailfish OS as an
alternative to power their hardware. It was also rumoured that Oak OS would be
30% faster compared to Android and that other Chinese Tech Giants such as
Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo were testing Oak OS in their smartphones.
Huawei’s
EMUI based Android Q was leaked on the 14th of June, along with the
confirmation of the delays of Huawei Mate X (their foldable Smartphone) hitting
the market, which confirmed that, though Huawei was banned by Google just
around the announcement of the Android Q beta release, Huawei still pushed its
development team to create EMUI based on android Q. Huawei officially confirmed
that the ban could inflict a loss of approximately $30 billion on the gross
worth of the company, and that their sales would also dip down by approximately
40 to 60% following the ban, which would mean a loss of 40 to 60 million units
in sales, on the 17th of June.
20th June,
brought good news for the Chinese tech giant, it was reported that 14 of the
smartphones under the Huawei and Honor branding including the P20 and P30
series would receive the official android Q update from Google, and Huawei
officially filed a lawsuit against the U.S Department of Commerce with regards
to the ban, the company sued the agency over the seizure of telecommunications
equipment, and FedEx refused to deliver a package containing a Huawei product
inside citing the reason for doing so being the order from the U.S
administration.
The P30
series shatters the sales record of its predecessor by a large margin, on the
27th of June, but with all the surrounding controversies and flak it is highly
unlikely that this trend of the Chinese tech giant would continue to exist.
Finally, on the 29th of June, U.S President Donald Trump announced that the ban
will be partially lifted from Huawei, saying that U.S companies can carry out
business with Huawei, until and unless it carries no risk to U.S security,
until the G20 summit takes place. Thus, Huawei can now acquire basic components
for its smartphones such as the Android OS, and the ARM architecture for
Hisilicon Kirin processors.
What Next?
Even with
the ban partially lifted and Google and Qualcomm whitelisting Huawei, there is
a possibility that the U.S administration under President Trump’s orders
imposes the ban on Huawei again in full weight.
Will Huawei
face a full weighted ban from the Trump administration and the other Tech
Consortiums in future? Will Huawei ditch Google’s Android and ship smartphones
with Oak OS instead? And is DJI (widely renowned manufacturer of Drones) next
in line of getting a Ban? Stay locked on to ‘the Bytetitian’ to find
out.
Sources:
https://www.androidauthority.com/
https://www.gsmarena.com/
https://www.9to5google.com/
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