Huawei’s Mate 30 Will Be a Disaster Outside China. Here’s Why That Doesn’t Matter.
U.S. Intelligence’s aversion to Huawei could help China win the 5G race
The smartphone revolution, now 12 years old, has seen some clunkers in its time. But the newest one is very different from its predecessors.
The Huawei Mate 30 launched this month with all the media fanfare that a multibillion-dollar company can achieve. On the surface, the device should be a hot competitor to Samsung in the premium segment. It’s a flagship phone that’s got great cameras, a fast processor, a big display, a fingerprint reader under that display, and 5G connectivity.
“Embrace the future with new possibilities,” reads the Huawei marketing blurb. The problem is, outside the borders of China, the Mate 30 doesn’t have any possibilities — only limitations. The U.S. security ban, which prevents American companies from doing business with Huawei on national security grounds, means that the Mate 30 doesn’t come with Google services onboard. It can’t run Google apps, doesn’t run and can’t get the Google Play app store, and can’t even use Google’s “Android” trademark. Many other apps won’t run either, including Netflix.
That doesn’t matter inside China, because no “Android” phone there is sold with Google services, to begin with; they all use the open-source version of Android, Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and stick their own skin on top. They then have their own app stores, though the essential app is WeChat, a platform in its own right. Huawei will eventually move its devices to a proprietary HarmonyOS, which faces its own challenges.
Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s consumer business group, sought to put a brave face on the situation, suggesting that customers could run Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, downloading them either from Huawei’s app store or from third-party stores. That’s all well and good, but maybe we could get an app or two that’s not owned by Facebook? The reality, though, is that people won’t download any third-party apps. The security implications of using third-party Android app stores are horrendous: malware abounds, and it’s a multistep process to even get to the stage where you can access the apps you’d usually want.
