The biggest and most epic aspect of the US-China trade war has been the Google v. Huawei saga, which has seen both sides take some fairly immense hits. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer has been blacklisted by US companies over security fears, while Google has lost a reasonably huge group of consumers. It seems that there is no clear resolution in sight yet, as a new twist has made it way into the conflict: Huawei’s Mate 30 phones have lost backdoor access to Google’s Android apps.
According to a report by Bloomberg, the Chinese company’s latest flagship devices are now unable to install apps such as Google Maps and Gmail, even via backdoor access. While Mate 30 users could not manually download and install apps due to the restrictions imposed over the course of the trade war, they were able to rely on a neat trick that involved downloading those apps via an application called LZPLay.
However, this loophole no longer works, and Google is apparently the only entity that can bring about a change like that. If this report is true, Mate 30 users the world over have now effectively lost access to Google apps in every sense. It will be even more difficult for the company to compete in the global market alongside Apple’s devices and all smartphones that have full access to the suite of Google apps.
The company will, of course, continue to thrive in its native China where a vast majority of Google apps and services are already banned by the government thereby compelling the locals to rely on alternatives like WeChat and Baidu. However, with Mate 30’s global sales bound to suffer, Huawei needs to come up with a different strategy if it wants to ensure that it doesn’t end up on the losing end of this war.
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