Huawei's international smartphone business took a massive hit last year after it was put on an Entity list by the U.S. government. This means that the company could no longer do business with U.S. companies. While Huawei has managed to find a workaround to most of the roadblocks, the ban has meant that it cannot launch new devices with Google Play Store and the entire suite of Google apps pre-loaded.
So far, the company has launched two flagship lineup of devices -- the Mate 30 and P40, both of which shipped without Google's mobile suite. Due to this, the phones have not sold as well as they potentially could have. The lack of Google's apps and services is not a big deal in China since Google is banned there.
Huawei has been working on building its own Play Store alternative, AppGallery. With Huawei unlikely to be able to ship Google's apps and services on its devices in the foreseeable future, this is an important move from the company. However, without Google apps, Huawei devices are unlikely to attract customers outside of China. However, Huawei's CEO Eric Xu has a strategy on how the company could ship Google apps on its devices. Xu hopes that Google could submit its apps on the AppGallery thereby making it available for Huawei smartphones.
“We hope Google services can be available through our AppGallery, just like how Google services are available through Apple’s App Store,” Xu said in Mandarin, according to CNBC’s translation.
Google already does something similar for iPhones where it submits its apps on the App Store for Apple's approval.
This is definitely a unique strategy from Huawei, though it all depends on whether Google is interested in submitting its apps to AppSuite or not. Huawei has reportedly also joined forces with Xiaomi, Vivo, and other Chinese OEMs to create a Play Store rival for markets outside of China.
Source: CNBC
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