The US Government extends Huawei’s ban for another year

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump has extended an executive order that called for a “National Emergency” to secure information and telecommunication threats. The first executive order was executed on May 2019 which affected foreign businesses from working on US soil including Huawei, which had a direct effect from the executive order.

This threat continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. For this reason, the national emergency declared on May 15, 2019, must continue in effect beyond May 15, 2020. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13873 with respect to securing the information and communications technology and services supply chain.

With the executive order in effect, it banned Huawei’s entire business in the US including its Mobile and Network Communication Technology equipment business. For its mobile business, the ban on Huawei barred the company from using Google Mobile Services(GMS), an Android core service essential for most mobile apps to work with Android operating system and eventually its Google Play app where users can safety download and install apps to their devices. This became a deal-breaker for customers not just in the US but eventually all over the world.

With the ban to do business in the US continued and with no GMS to use, Huawei created its own version of GMS and launched the Huawei Mobile Services(HMS) together with the new Mate 30 series late of last year.

Back in March, Huawei announced that its own HMS now has around 400 million active users and about 1.3 Million developers on it. With HMS, Huawei also developed its own app store called the AppGallery which allows users to download and install hundreds and thousands of apps as seen from Google Play ranging from games to social media apps, entertainment, tools, business apps and even close alternatives to Google apps on their devices.

As we expect Huawei to strengthen its own AppGallery as the ban continues, more and more users will be drawn to it as Huawei continues to sell their devices despite the absence of Google Play. Mind you, there are workarounds to make Google Play work on new Huawei devices but it will take a little more of patience and effort, and it’s something Huawei users and enthusiasts have in common.