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The Verge has a story about the latest in the US government's war against Huawei:
Following the US crackdown on Chinese technology companies, Google has cut off Huawei’s Android license, dealing a huge blow to the besieged phonemaker. Reuters first reported the news, and The Verge subsequently confirmed Google’s suspension of business with Huawei with a source familiar with the matter.
Reached for comment, a Google spokesperson said only “We are complying with the order and reviewing the implications.” The order, in this case, appears to be the US Commerce Department’s recent decision to place Huawei on the “Entity List,” which as Reuters reports is a list of companies that are unable to buy technology from US companies without government approval.
Speaking to Reuters, a Google spokesperson confirmed that “Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices.” So while existing Huawei phones around the world won’t be immediately impacted by the decision, the future of updates for those phones as well as any new phones Huawei would produce remains in question.
Huawei is now restricted to using the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), cutting the company off from critical Google apps and services that consumers outside of China expect on Android devices. That also means Huawei will only be able to push security updates for Android once they’re made available in AOSP, assuming the company uses its own update system. It’s not clear yet how this will affect the full range of Android integrations that Huawei depends on, but we will update this story when we receive additional clarification about the impacts of Google’s decision.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Monday May 20 2019, @08:29PM (1 child)
So there are 2 points of attack in this trade war (that I know of). Tariffs and Huawei. If you assume that it is a good idea to harm China in a trade war, are they effective? Starting with Huawei, this appears to work. The import ban only takes away their US sales. This will likely harm their global sales. That will eventually hurt the Chinese people who work for them. Tariffs not so much. The Chinese companies charge the same price. The US stores won't let their profit margins slip so they raise their prices. So US citizens, primarily the poorer ones who can't afford better, actually pay. That makes US tariffs on China a regressive tax at home. If and only if the US poor are completely bled dry will sales and profits in China diminish.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @04:33AM
But, by removing a competitor that produced high quality (presumably - I don't own one) products at lower prices, it allows the remaining competitors (most of which are still sourcing parts and labour from Chinese and other foreign factories) to raise prices without fear of lower cost competition.
I'm not saying that isn't a good thing for local US manufacturing, but in the short term, it does that same thing that a tariff does: It causes prices to go up. So all those poor people who are getting raped by Huawei's cheap prices with profits going to China, will now be getting raped by other manufacturers like Samsung whose profits go to Korea.
Yay for the poor!