Huawei went ahead with the launch of the Mate 30 series without pre-installed Google Apps in Munich, Germany today.
The Mate 30 series will come without pre-installed key Google apps like Gmail, YouTube, Maps or Play Store due to the US blacklist. Instead the Chinese company will offer its own Android-based interface called EMUI10 and its own app store.
It will also operate on an open-source version of Google’s Android operating system since it has been unable to license the latest version of Android due to restrictions imposed by the U.S. also.
Though the U.S. extended reprieve for the Chinese tech giant for an added 90 days until mid-November. But a Google spokesperson told Reuters last month the reprieve does not apply to new products like the Mate 30.
Innovation Village reported that Huawei would go ahead with the launch of the Mate 30 without Google apps.
At the press event, Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei’s consumer products division, confirmed that the company has been forced to drop Google’s Mobile Services (GMS) license on the Mate 30 series of devices.
According to him, “We cannot use the Google Mobile Services core, we can use the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) core. Today that’s because of a US ban that these phones cannot preinstall the GMS core, it has forced us to use the HMS Core running the Huawei app gallery on the Mate 30 series phones.”
The Google’s Play Store is a crucial part of the company’s Google Mobile Services license, and it’s how the majority of Android-powered handsets outside of China get access to apps. Since Huawei can’t really work around this very easily, instead it’s simply building its own alternative to Google’s Play Store and associated services.
The company says it is using a $1 billion to fund development, user growth, and marketing of its own Huawei Mobile Services. It says it already has over 45,000 apps already integrated with Huawei Mobile Services, but there will be many thousands more that will need to be tweaked and made available in Huawei’s App Gallery.
Here are the devices Huawei unveiled today:
- Huawei Mate 30
- Huawei Mate 30 Pro
- Porsche Design Huawei Mate 30 RS
- Huawei Watch GT 2
- Huawei Free Buds 2 and
- Huawei Vision
No dates were stated for the release of the gadgets.
