U.S. President Donald Trump signed a recent executive order that placed several companies on an 'Entity List.' This list includes ZTE and Huawei, two Shenzhen, China-based smartphone manufacturers and telecommunications equipment providers.
We offer a detailed explainer regarding the situation here.
However, in short, Huawei and ZTE smartphones are now blocked from U.S. services, which means Google - a U.S.-based company - is pulling its business from Huawei and ZTE smartphones. This means these devices will lose access to the Google Play Store.
For people with a Huawei or ZTE smartphone, Google is no longer responsible for any app updates, and it will be more difficult for China-based companies to provide security updates or Android upgrades.
However, for those looking to buy a new Huawei or ZTE phone (say later this year or next year), their situation will be different. These devices will likely run a different operating system and if not, they will feature an Android OS based on Google's Android Open Source Project, which will cause it to lack many of the functionalities we've become to know and love.
Even though it would be based on the AOSP with EMUI (in Huawei's case) on overtop it will lack a lot of app support. Though there's always android application packages (APK) that users can install.
Huawei is developing its own operating system, however, it's unclear exactly when the OS will come out and will likely not be a viable Android or iOS competitor. It's also unclear if the OS will be based on the AOSP. It will also lack U.S.-based apps such as Facebook, Netflix, Chrome and Uber.
So we're curious: would you still consider buying a future Huawei or ZTE smartphone given they won't have access to the Google Play Store? Or, will you have to wait to see what Huawei's future OS will be like?
