Speaking to Reuters, a Google Spokesman said that “the Mate 30 cannot be sold with licensed Google apps and services due to the U.S. ban on sales to Huawei.”
After being placed on an Entity List that prevents US firms from doing business with Huawei without a license, the US Commerce Department granted it a 90-day reprieve to take action “necessary to provide service and support, including software updates or patches, to existing Huawei handsets that were available to the public on or before May 16, 2019.” Another 90-day extension was granted last week, but it does not apply to new products such as the Mate 30.
While upcoming Huawei devices including the Mate 30 and possibly the folding Mate X will still use an open-source version of Android, they will lack the Google Play Store and other Google apps and services, which would doubtlessly affect their sales in most parts of the world. Google could attempt to secure a license from the Commerce Department to keep doing business with Huawei, but the company hasn’t yet said if it’s applied.
After revealing its in-house HarmonyOS operating system last month, Huawei last week said that it didn’t plan to launch any phones powered by the operating system this year and that it would stick with Android “until the last minute.”
Despite its problems in the US, Huawei saw its Q2 2019 worldwide handset shipments increase by almost 10 million units compared to the same period last year, thanks mostly to their increasing popularity in China.
