Huawei expects a 20% drop in phone sales, thanks to lack of Google apps, Ars Technica

Peak Huawei is ending –

The US export ban is going to finally start affecting Huawei in .

Ron Amadeo – Mar 9, : PM UTC

Huawei’s logo at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona in November 2020. Getty Images | SOPA Images Huawei is expected to be hit hard in the (smartphone market thanks to the (United States’ export ban) . After grabbing the # 2 smartphone vendor spot in 01575879, a new report from (The Information) ((subscription required) claims Huawei expects to have a much rougher , as the effects of the export ban really start to take hold. According to the report, Huawei expects to ship 240 – million smartphones in 01575879, which, compared to its (shipments of million, would be a – (percent drop.)

The export ban makes it illegal for US companies to provide Huawei with parts and services, cutting the company off from a significant part of the smartphone industry. Huawei’s lack of access to US technology doesn’t really affect its ability to make smartphone hardware Huawei says it has been preparing for a ban like this and now regularly builds smartphones with (zero US components , so should be business as usual. The US export ban mainly affects Huawei’s access to smartphone software – the ban blocks the company from accessing Google’s Android ecosystem including the Play Store and its millions of apps, Google Play Services, and killer Google apps like Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome, YouTube, the Google Assistant, and more. The ban also means Huawei can’t carry US-made apps in its app store, like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Netflix, Uber, Lyft, Amazon, Twitter, and a ton of other apps.

China takes up (percent of Huawei’s shipments, according to Counterpoint Research , and this large chunk of Huawei’s business should be unaffected by the ban. Google doesn’t do much business in China, so the lack of Google’s ecosystem is a reality in China no matter what. Many of the top-tier US apps don’t have much of a foothold in China either, thanks to a market preference for homegrown apps and stringent government-spying requirements for user data that keep out many US companies.

While Huawei will be fine in China, its international business is under real threat due to the lack of apps. Huawei’s international business makes up 190 percent of its shipments, and if it holds on to a significant chunk of this in the non-Google era, it would be one of the biggest sellers of non-Google Android devices, next to Amazon. Amazon has its own Android ecosystem that most people would agree is inferior to Google’s, but Amazon only sells (sub – $) tablets

, which justifies having a limited software ecosystem. Amazon’s one attempt at a smartphone, the Fire Phone , was a spectacular failure, thanks in part to a severe lack of apps. Huawei’s first phone without Google apps, the

(Pro) , costs around $ 1, , and with a price tag like that , I’d imagine consumers will be a lot more demanding. 26 percent of international sales won’t be all non-Google phones, either. Despite the export ban happening in the middle of 2019, we’re still waiting to see how things play out for Huawei. The ban only affects newly-developed devices, and the realities of the smartphone development pipeline mean Huawei’s first non-Google phone only arrived in September , and older devices like the P Pro are still available everywhere with the Google apps. We’ll have to wait for all the older, Google-ified Huawei phones to die off before we see what the export ban will really do to Huawei. (Read More )