
Asian shops shun Huawei phone trade-ins on Google suspension worries - RmDen
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-usa-consumer/huawei-unwanted-asian-shops-shun-phone-trade-ins-on-google-suspension-worries-idUSKCN1SS16O
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HeWhoLurksLate
Meanwhile, the EU is trying to somewhat cut off Google's monopoly on Android,
by telling them they can't _force manufacturers to use their software_. Now,
people in Asia are complaining that they _can 't_ access Google's stuff.

It seems like a bit off that Huawei, which, IIRC, was part of that group of
companies that was complaining about Google's monopoly, _doesn 't have a good
replacement for Google's services_.

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antome
The problem is that the play store is a monopoly. If neither Amazon nor
Samsung can create an app store with even a small fraction of the total useful
apps found on the play store, who can? And if you can't find one particular
app on the Amazon/Samsung store, why bother at all?

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cobookman
They can create an app store on Android. Nobody is stopping them.

The same can't be said for ios

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benatkin
Huawei could make a UI toolkit similar to iOS, and use the Swift open source
project, and encourage developers to port their iOS apps.

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throwayEngineer
This seems like an expensive risky overkill to trust Apple, when JavaScript
solutions work on every platform.

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ak39
Can the user not simply erase OEM and load the stock Android OS and use the
phone just as effectively (fully)?

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supergirl
i imagine no. google services and maybe all apps can get some hw id that tells
them it's huawei. maybe a custom android built that lies about this. but then
google might build more checks and so on

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ak39
Thanks for this. Wow, this is incredible. What waste of perfectly-paid-for
hardware. :-(

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baybal2
Some Huawei phones in Asian markets were sold without gapps for many years.

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inawarminister
Singapore and Philippines aren't exactly Mainland China...

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baybal2
I saw google free Huawei phones in quite a number of places other than China

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xbmcuser
Till recently Huawei phones bootloaders could be easily be unlocked. If they
still are people now can get a cheap phone and install lineage or other os

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taneq
Would running LineageOS on one of these circumvent the concerns about Huawei?
Or are people worried they're compromised at the driver or firmware level?

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jeroenhd
Even if Huawei would let you unlock the bootloader properly, using LineageOS
on an unauthorized device (such as upcoming Huawei devices) would be a pain.
Google recently started requiring you to register a device with your account
for every unauthorized device running Play Services (that is, a device that
didn't get certified; certified devices running custom ROMs don't have this
limitation) and apps might not show up. Netflix is not available for rooted
devices, for example, and probably won't be on uncertified devices either.

I don't think it's the people who are worried about Huawei though; this whole
thing reeks of US government power play, trying to protect US businesses over
the backs of consumers.

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mmastrac
> Netflix is not available for rooted devices, for example, and probably won't
> be on uncertified devices either.

Note that you can use Magisk to get around the Play store not showing apps
like this, but it's definitely not a solution for everyone.

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Leary
They should ship them to China, where they are still selling like hot cakes.

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varjag
Since they were shipped out of China in the first place, it means either the
market is already saturated or margins there are worse.

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Leary
They were shipped out of China prior to Trump's ban on Huawei. The decline in
perceived value occurred after. There was no such decline in China.

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ngcc_hk
You can’t use those USA app in china. Use chinese app ?

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theredbox
This talks about other asian countries that dont use chinese alternatives.

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supertiger
Trump administration really showed the world how software can be weaponized
against another country when there's trade dispute. EU better start growing
their own internet/software ecosystem too.

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oxymoran
This is unrelated to the trade war. There are security concerns with Huawei
products because the company has deep connections to the Chinese government.

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muyuu
As do all companies based in China. Huawei has long been suspected of doing a
lot of network espionage work for the Chinese government - as are Chinese
social networks, chat apps, mail apps, etc - but we also know for sure that
Silicon Valley's Big Tech are heavily infiltrated by the NSA.

