Donald’s Trump Trade ban on Huawei not only affected their smartphone business with Google but also another project the Chinese tech giant was working with Google – a Huawei-branded smart speaker. Progress on this collaboration between the two tech companies ran into a halt after the Trade ban got into effect in May this year.
The Chinese tech giant was going to launch the Huawei-branded at this years IFA Trade Show that will be happening in Berlin this coming September. The smart speaker was going to be powered by Google Assistant and be sold in countries outside China including the USA.
“We worked on this project with Google for a year and made a lot of progress. Then everything suddenly stopped,” said a Huawei employee who did not want to be named according to The Information.
This new revelation shows how the two tech giants had a well-working business partnership. Huawei accelerated the development of their own OS after Google cut ties after the Trade ban which meant that Huawei couldn’t use Google’s Android and its other services and apps. They later got a reprieve and Huawei took that time to push Android software updates and upgrades to its current phones.
At a G20 summit, Trump announced that US companies will be allowed to work with Huawei again within a month but Huawei is still uncertain if its future phones will still run Android although talks are still going on behind closed doors. Hopefully, if things go back to normal(it won’t be business as usual, however) after these talks, progress on the Smart Speaker gets back on track and that the speaker launches later this year or early this year, fingers twisted.
Huawei is still using the time remaining under the temporary reprieve to work on Android Q-based EMUI 10. We’ve seen previews of how Huawei’s Android Skin will look like and also know that it will be launched early next month.
Huawei’s in-house OS, HongMeng OS or Harmony OS fast performance makes it ideal for other IoT devices including self-driving cars. For now, it has been rumoured that the first device to use HongMengOS will be a smart TV that will serve as an entertainment platform and a hub for internet-controlled home devices.
