Huawei touts its 'substantial contributions' to Android and says it will continue supporting current phones

In response to Google's revoking its license to use Android, Huawei has announced that it will continue to provide support and updates to current phones and tablets.

Chinese technology firm Huawei has responded to Google's decision to revoke its Android license. A company spokesman said that Huawei had been a major factor in the success of Android and that it would continue to provide security updates to its existing customers.

"We have made substantial contributions to the development and growth of Android around the world," the spokesman told Reuters. "Huawei will continue to provide security updates and after-sales services to all existing Huawei and Honor smartphone and tablet products, covering those that have been sold and that are still in stock globally."

The spokesman did not address specific plans for how the firm would continue, but did claim that Huawei would continue with its phones. "We will continue to build a safe and sustainable software ecosystem," he said, "in order to provide the best experience for all users globally."

Google revoked Huawei's license for Android after the US Department of Commerce put the company on its Entity List, a blacklist of firms considered to potentially represent a national security risk.

The move means that the company will have to rely on an open source version of the Android operating system. This is likely to mean its phones won't be able to use key services and apps such as Gmail and YouTube.

The US blacklist is also affecting Huawei's hardware suppliers as both American ones and now Europe's Infineon have suspended sales to the company.

11 Comments

ArianneFeldry 61 comments · 5 Years

About 5 years ago

Dying company lashes out. They'll make every claim they can to try and be relevant before they lose everything. What even is impressive about selling $20 phones to third world countries? Nevermind selling more $20 devices than other $20 device makers.

avon b7 8008 comments · 20 Years

About 5 years ago

ArianneFeldry said:

Dying company lashes out. They'll make every claim they can to try and be relevant before they lose everything. What even is impressive about selling $20 phones to third world countries? Nevermind selling more $20 devices than other $20 device makers.

If what you are saying were even half true it would be supremely impressive: providing phone for people in third world countries that would have hard time purchasing them otherwise.

The problem, and it is huge, is that what you are saying isn't even near half true.

Huawei is a massive commercial threat to the Trump administration, which has nothing to counter it. Trump would love to have something, some company, anything to shift power in the emerging 5G era.

So, without anything to stop the deployment of Huawei systems worldwide and seeing the charade of 'national security risks' bear no fruit and how allies refused to act without seeing evidence (and were later threatened for not bowing to US demands), Trump has shoved aside all the pretexts he has used up to now and moved into uncharted territory.

Now, he will have to wait and see what the Chinese response is and, given the precedent he has now set, China could choose (validly) an unrestrained tit-for-tat response which could escalate things even further.

ivanh 596 comments · 12 Years

About 5 years ago

I’m expecting to hear from Oracle about banning JAVA developed apps to put on Huawei products.

franklinjackcon 612 comments · 10 Years

About 5 years ago

ArianneFeldry said:

Dying company lashes out. They'll make every claim they can to try and be relevant before they lose everything. What even is impressive about selling $20 phones to third world countries? Nevermind selling more $20 devices than other $20 device makers.

It did more than $100B in revenue last year and has been growing at 20% pa over the last few years. In Europe, where it's not banned, it's selling good quality handsets in very large volumes not to mention the carrier-grade networking equipment and is a major part of the cloud infrastructure. Not bad for a dying company.