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If you’re intent on sticking with Huawei despite its ongoing problems with the US, you may be out of luck. According to a Huawei source speaking to Dutch site LetsGoDigital, the upcoming Mate 30 is going to get a considerably more limited release than the Mate 20 and indeed the P30 before it.
The source says that no version of the Mate 30 – not the Lite, Pro or vanilla version – will be launching in Central Europe. That region includes the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany, and the latter of these is particularly awkward, as that’s where Huawei is holding the launch event tomorrow.
Why would Huawei cut off a previously lucrative market? Well it comes back to its ongoing problems with the US. While Huawei has never launched phones stateside because phone networks don’t include the company’s handsets on contracts, the recent ban has had a knock-on effect to US business that can work with Huawei, and that includes Android makers Google.
Now Huawei can’t be stopped from using Android – it’s open source, so anybody can use it. But it’ll be behind on the security updates after losing preferred partner privileges, and more importantly Google products won’t be included: no Gmail, no YouTube… not even a Google Play Store for populating these gaps yourself.
No doubt these apps can be sideloaded, but it’ll perhaps be beyond the skillset of the average casual phone buyer. So it appears Huawei has decided to cut its losses in markets where Google rules supreme.
Treat this with some scepticism for now: it would be mighty weird for Huawei to do a big launch event in a country that isn’t getting the phone, after all. Still: watch this space.
