Google suspends some business with Huawei

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-alphabet-exclusive/exclusive-google-suspends-some-business-with-huawei-after-trump-blacklist-source-idUSKCN1SP0NB

by samsonradu • 7 years ago

466 481 7 years ago

reuters.com

dirtyid• 7 years ago

If true, this is certainly a nuclear move. There's a variety of first party app stores in China, though I doubt they'll see much success convincing Western users to switch. Curious if there's going to be antitrust fallout from markets outside the US for unilaterally crippling vendors at behest of US foreign policy. Is Microsoft or Apple going to pull their app stores as well? What happened to project Dragon Fly?

On the other hand, I wonder how Huawei / China will retaliate. Wouldn't be surprised if this kills all Google manufacturing prospects in China which pretty much kills Google hardware.

luckylion4• 7 years ago

I doubt that China will throw Google out.

It's a bit of a reminder that Google is under US jurisdiction and there's a point to be made that, no matter what they promise you, if the US wants their data, they get their data.

More competition can only be good, if this leads to the Chinese creating a third major platform, I welcome it. If they open source it, they may even have success outside of China.

azinman2• 7 years ago

If you’re Chinese, having another domestic platform is a good and important thing towards self determination. Not so great if you’re American, as they’re playing for winner-takes-all.

roca11• 7 years ago

As a non-American I'd much rather the USA has my data than China has it.

seanmcdirmid3• 7 years ago

I think much of that hardware is rebranded OEM anyways, which should be safe. It also isn’t clear China would blame google for this, or if its any worse than how google has pissed the Chinese government off in the past. Maybe they’ll just block google websites...wait no, they’ve done that already.

pbhjpbhj7• 7 years ago

Surely it doesn't matter if China blame Google. USA have gone after Huawei based on Huawei being Chinese, so the response of China to stop manufacturing stuff for USA companies would seem reasonable, no?

Is this a "force people to buy USA manufactured goods; but blame it on the Chinese" attempt?

yding13• 7 years ago

The biggest threat to Google in my opinion would be the possibility that Huawei and China could try to "steal" Android from them.

Imagine in 2021 the Chinese government mandates that every Chinese smartphone manufacturer needs to switch to ChAndroid for all of their product lines, with a single unified app store, whether they sell the phones inside or outside of China. Well, fully half of the top smartphone companies in the world are Chinese. So all of a sudden Google would lose the ability to monetize on almost half of the ecosystem.

And if it were open and successful, other Android manufacturers could move over. Samsung would LOVE the ability to get a piece of the search and app revenue on every one of their phones. Right now they're locked out because of Google's licensing agreement for Android, but they must look at how much money Google pays Apple every year to be the default search provider very longingly.

jmull• 7 years ago

And if it were open...

An OS mandated by the Chinese government. That’s pretty much the opposite open in multiple ways.

scarface743• 7 years ago

Europe forced Google into a consent degree. It isn’t allow to forbid manufacturers from selling non Google versions of Android.

sonnyblarney2• 7 years ago

This is already the case, economically.

Android is open source, these vendors are free to fork and do whatever.

The lion's haul for Google is not 'app store sales' in China , it's search.

Android is not about App Store, that's just a marginal thing - it's about owning and controlling search everywhere. It's a means to extend their primary product.

Samsung can make it's own app store tomorrow, but they're not going to get 'Google Search' - which is what people want - so they'll have to do for now.

As far as Huawei ... well, open trade can only be had by like economies. If one economy can externalize pollution, labour costs, healthcare, and the other can't - then there cannot be open trade. Same thing for more contentious issues such as IP theft, foreign ownership rules, capital controls, state control of enterprises.

Huawei is the example, the tip of the spear. It hardly even matters what the degree of materiality is, that said, there should be not question that there's existential risk with Huawei. The CCP can require Huawei to do whatever, at any time, and Huawei will happily comply.

China can't enjoy the advantages of a 'developing economy' while trying to put 1st tier industries form advanced economies out of business, it's not going to sit well.

So we saw the big rise of China, now they're slowing down to 'nice growth' instead of crazy growth, they're grabbing land and industry so the West is wary. Meaning the trade rules will change.

This is the new normal.

oldjokes• 7 years ago

The internet, at least as we knew it, is dead. What we have now is a highly segemented, highly federated, highly monitored, centralized communication network. The walls and the controls around access are getting more intricate every day, we've long ago left the idea of an open network in the trash can.

It sure seems like the future is more and more walls, more and more reactionary defensive measures. Nobody seems to have any inclination to resist this trend.

xfitm3• 7 years ago

Seemingly more and more people want internet regulation. Nobody cares about things like free speech anymore, and actively campaign that it’s harmful.

appleshore• 7 years ago

Of course, that's China's goal for their 2025 project right? It seems Americans are underestimating the long-term plans and strategies of countries that deny liberal democratic principles.

tgsovlerkhgsel4• 7 years ago

though I doubt they'll see much success convincing Western users to switch.

Are any of these stores near the quality levels that Western audiences expect? My experience with software from China was consistently bad. Even the AliExpress web site looks like a cobbled together, barely working mess that people only put up with because of the low prices of the goods you can buy there, which won't work for app stores.

roca11• 7 years ago

I like AliExpress, but you're right, the site (the English site at least) looks like it was cobbled together in 1998.

duxup2• 7 years ago

Anyone know anything about this able to break this down a bit further?

This sounds like it all revolves around Android / Huawei getting booted from the Open Handset Alliance maybe?

DannyBee• 7 years ago

It's because they were literally blacklisted by the US government. As other comments say, all companies in the US will do the same, it's not about Google, as much as the article tries to make it about Google

duxup2• 7 years ago

I'm thinking more about about the specifics of what exactly is being limited here and etc.

onetimemanytime2• 7 years ago

Or they did the same thing every US company will have to do thanks to the blacklist.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-huaweitech/chin... >>The U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday it is adding Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and 70 affiliates to its so-called “Entity List” - a move that bans the telecom giant from buying parts and components from U.S. companies without U.S. government approval.

mrosett• 7 years ago

Alternative headline: “Google complies with law”. They didn’t have much choice here.

judge2020• 7 years ago

Otherwise, the article is good for showing the extent of the political situation.

One might be able to stretch this to 'US aids potential cyber attacks in China' since phones in China might no longer receive security updates in Android.

scarface743• 7 years ago

The open source version of Android is still available. Why wouldn’t that be getting updates?

mcintyre1994• 7 years ago

Don't phones in China already not use proprietary Google stuff? The cyber attacks being aided here are surely on Huawei owners outside of China (US/Europe mostly I expect?) where their phone shipped with Google Play and could get Google updates/other services?

alexkavon• 7 years ago

Any press is good press...

the8472• 7 years ago

They also "comply" with complex international networks of tax law.

kerng2• 7 years ago

There should be a wide list of companies to whom this applies now. Is there a more comprehensive enumeration besides just listing Google?

pbhjpbhj7• 7 years ago

It's every company in USA, isn't it?

kerng2• 7 years ago

Not every US company already makes business with Huawei - so in that case they wouldn't have to stop selling/buying things, because they never started. E.g. is Microsoft, Apple or Amazon impacted?

plantain• 7 years ago

No more updates for my Huawei phone then presumably. Really feeling more secure now!

yding13• 7 years ago

Huawei really needs to give everyone bootloader unlocks so that people can move to LineageOS in the meantime.

techntoke3• 7 years ago

They will probably lose support from mobile carriers at that point.

philwelch• 7 years ago

Your phone was manufactured by a front for a foreign intelligence service. It was never secure.

onei2• 7 years ago

Just to play devil's advocate, do you have any citations for that statement?

goguy• 7 years ago

Personally I would prefer it to be a foreign government rather than the one in charge of the country I reside in...

techntoke3• 7 years ago

American-manufactured devices are probably equally as infiltrated by American foreign intelligence services. Hence why they don't just use a standard Linux distro with open source firmware.

StringyBob• 7 years ago

Google have no choice but to comply with US law. This is now going to make a load of existing US owned (Huawei manufactured) devices less secure unless an exemption is agreed for things like software security updates.

Not only that, the ban encourages a long term move away from US-based tech as alternatives are needed within China. This new tech will ultimately be available worldwide, but no longer owned or controlled by US companies.

As someone from neither China or US, it seems crazy. It’s one thing to ban Huawei from your own markets for security concerns, but by making such a heavy handed ban on working with them, the US government seem to be making the US less secure short term, but also US companies will be less competitive and less influential in the world long term.

mrep• 7 years ago

the ban encourages a long term move away from US-based tech as alternatives are needed within China.

China blocked Google play years ago and repeatedly blocks every attempt Google tries to make to relaunch back into china [0] so they did that a long time ago.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/google-misses-out-on-billion...

usr11062• 7 years ago

Google have no choice but to comply with US law

Like they have no choice with tax laws. Or no choice with cartel laws. Or no choice with data protection laws.

They are agressively trying to circumvent many laws all the times to extend their monopoly and grow their profits. They have multi-billion fines from the EU and several member states pending and no somewhat critical thinking citizen would claim that EU has been particularly tough on their monopoly and tax evasions.

anarazel• 7 years ago

Well, OS updates weren't going through the play store anyway, no? And it appears you'll continue to be able to download app updates via the play store "But users of existing Huawei devices who have access to the Google Play Store will still be able to download app updates provided by Google.".

arthurfm2• 7 years ago

Some security updates will be installed via the Play Store starting from Android Q.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18531350/google-android-q-...

knocte• 7 years ago

Well, Android is opensource so they will be able to just run it, but without that google crap such as gmail, maps, assistant, etc... Which sounds like a good thing to me. I'll try to buy a new Huawei phone soon.

daxterspeed• 7 years ago

Huawei being a Chinese company are perfectly content with spying on you without Google trying to interfere. Be prepared in a few years when certain network requests just fail, like trying to send a comment mentioning 996.icu.

pbhjpbhj7• 7 years ago

Which USA and USA based companies would never do; praise God for the USA defending us all from giving our money to their industrial opponents, right?

stefan_• 7 years ago

Heh, there will be a rude awakening when they try AOSP or the open-source Android.. "wait, it doesn't have a launcher?"

No, seriously, AOSP is very far from useful. That's before you consider that to run Android on any sort of recent hardware, you need manufacturer support from the chips you are using, which you can't get if you are barred from trade with them.

Markoff6• 7 years ago

Huawei has pretty much everything their own including launcher, dialer, email etc

mappu• 7 years ago

Hasn't AOSP always had a launcher? https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Laun... is the current one.

ulfw4• 7 years ago

Almost none of the Chinese phones use barebones Google Android. They all have their long established skins and launchers (EMUI, MIUI etc)

fffrantz• 7 years ago

If this also revokes the GMS agreements, it will have a much larger impact than the updates part. A whole lot of things on Android are dependant on the GMS, such as push notifications for certain apps, cloud storage of user data, and a lot more. Let's see where the it all ends up, but this may turn to be an enormous crippling move for Android on Huawei/Honor devices.

Markoff6• 7 years ago

considering Huawei, xiaomi, BBK, lenorola control majority of market everywhere outside US one would say it's quite opposite, they just need to convince Samsung to join them and Google with their Google play services it's past and they can keep their small market with their pixel phones thinking about their importance and that devs charging 30% it's moral

oblio3• 7 years ago

Samsung is extremely unlikely to join with the Chinese brands strangling them right now.

And it would be way worse with Huawei/Xiaomi & co. for devs, considering how those companies update the software on their phones...

wswkb• 7 years ago

the Chinese technology company that the U.S. government has sought to blacklist around the world

Around the world?

pbhjpbhj7• 7 years ago

They appear to be working hard on having it blacklisted in the UK AFAICT. BBC Click did a report and a guy from GCHQ basically said "it's not a problem" whilst there seems to be a deal of press trying to push the political angle to make it politically expedient -- I can only assume that's a propaganda attempt by USA?

I'm surprised that Huawei is such a threat to USA industry to be honest.

Perhaps Trump's team has shares in their opposition, or was trying to short them?

ETHisso20177• 7 years ago

Well, Paul Singer, founder of Elliott Management, has donated to Trump, and Elliott has a large stake in Samsung.

nisa2• 7 years ago

In Germany it was in the news that US hinted that if we wouldn't participate in banning Huawei we are excluded from further sharing of intelligence and stuff like this. For 5G and T-Mobile i.e. Deutsche Telekom AG they basically said: Dare to buy Huawai and you gonna have a bad time.

It's these liberal and western high ethics at work here...

rasz3• 7 years ago

Like building Putin gas pipeline behind EUs back?

angel_j2• 7 years ago

All I know about Huawei is that they produced what seemed like at least half of welfware phones—the kind available to anybody on most any kind of welfare, including EBT—and these phones were utter garbage. Reasonably, one could say they had ripped off the government, these phones were such crap. Screen a .5mm pane of brittle glass that a tap could break. Barely ran android, laden with crapware, basically needed to be plugged into a power source at all times. Some you couldn't get the SIM card out, like to put in your late model Samsung Galaxy. Pure garbage, yet the welfare service the phones are supposed to support is extremely valuable to a lot of people.

scarface743• 7 years ago

And this is different than almost all of the sub $100 phones sold through companies like MetroPCS?

angel_j2• 7 years ago

Your Tax Dollars At Work different.

robertAngst• 7 years ago

Instead of letting companies do international business, the government creates an artificial war.

It only takes the Republican Party winning 1 election to destroy economic freedom.

My political thoughts are going to change drastically if we can resew economic conditions with China after Trump leaves office.

ralph84• 7 years ago

Lol, yes the economic conditions with China previous to the current administration were oh so free. Unless you were Google or Facebook and wanted to run a website in China. Or you were a manufacturer and wanted to manufacture in China without transferring all of your IP to a state-owned JV partner.

ahmedfromtunis• 7 years ago

Huawei already saw this coming; at least that's what the company signaled last march when they announced they have a 'backup OS': https://www.engadget.com/amp/2019/03/14/huawei-confirms-os/

wallmountedtv• 7 years ago

A better source thats not google amp https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3001685/huawei-co...

reaperducer3• 7 years ago

I'm not sure why this is being voted down. I'll take a well-known Hong Kong newspaper (in this case the South China Morning Post) over a tech blog re-writing other people's journalism any day.

microcolonel2• 7 years ago

From comment by StudentStuff, hidden below:

SCMP is owned by Alibaba, they're far from impartial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Morning_Post .

OrgNet• 7 years ago

HN really should auto-convert AMP links because many HN users still post those.

drusepth2• 7 years ago

OT: What's wrong with AMP?

techntoke3• 7 years ago

If it is an optimized version of Linux, then they should just release it. It will probably be better than Android.

StudentStuff4• 7 years ago

Huawei still uses outdated, insecure versions of OpenSSL through their basestation code, and has successfully avoided using version control despite promising to address both issues back in 2012. This seems like an optimal environment to engineer an optimized version of Linux!

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/uk-says-huawei-equip...

sremani• 7 years ago

Sure, they were. This is the closest thing to Baghdad Bob's bluster, I have heard in my life.

Here is a helpful read, http://zeihan.com/my-way-or-the-huawei/

iamnothere2• 7 years ago

It would be nice to see Sailfish on there; it might finally help it gain some traction.

Creationer• 7 years ago

At what point does China just develop its own mobile OS?

There seems value in just taking the reigns, and making whatever you create open-source, so that ZTE and all the other Chinese manufacturers can use it as well.

Its certainly a major blow to the value of Huawei phones.

KaoruAoiShiho4• 7 years ago

Not just mobile... Huawei also makes really nice laptops and presumably MS/Intel are under the same obligation to sever relations with Huawei. Unless Huawei is going to make a huge retreat we might see a full on effort for a new OS that covers both usecases?

yding13• 7 years ago

My guess is that they'll probably just sell off / kill off their computer business. It's not a huge money maker for them, and trying to switch people off Windows is super hard.

reaperducer3• 7 years ago

At what point does China just develop its own mobile OS?

Three months ago.

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3001685/huawei-co...

skvark• 7 years ago

It was announced in 2017 that China was investing in its own mobile OS based on Sailfish OS (http://www.goodnewsfinland.com/jolla-goes-full-steam-ahead-i...). I don't know what's the status of the project currently. Russia has had similar plans (http://rusletter.com/articles/operating_system_sailfish_from...).

jorblumesea2• 7 years ago

Even if they develop a mobile OS, will it be the quality and usefulness of Google services? Android is just linux + google services. Without those, it's hard to make the sell to western audiences, at least.

Google Maps is a masterpiece of engineering and it's hard to imagine that Huawei will be able to compete, near term. If I'm reading the situation right, this might mean the end of Huawei in the western phone market unless something changes.

pascoej• 7 years ago

You can’t really use Google Maps in China. Even over VPN it’s outdated and often displays the wrong location due to the GPS scrambling that the government enforces on maps.

Baidu Maps is very good though, I would even say on par with Google Maps and better in some areas. It does however have more obvious ads which is annoying.

ETHisso20177• 7 years ago

I can't see any Chinese phone company feeling comfortable with this move. If someone sets up a viable non-US alternative to Android and the Play Store, they could jump ship en masse.

lone_haxx0r4• 7 years ago

Lineage OS

cs02rm0• 7 years ago

Beats me why more manufacturers don't just take Lineage.

ETHisso20177• 7 years ago

Is the license still controllable by the US Commerce Department though? Because if so I don't think the Chinese would be interested

yding13• 7 years ago

Lineage isn't good enough on its own. 99% of Lineage OS users also install google play services and the google play store. You need to have a replacement for all of the closed source Google APIs for app developers to use. It's a much bigger undertaking than just recompiling the base OS from source.

arthurfm2• 7 years ago

Huawei and Honor stopped providing bootloader unlock codes last year [1]. Wouldn't this make it impossible to install Lineage OS or another AOSP-based custom ROM?

[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-stop-providing-bootloa...

darklajid• 7 years ago

Huawei phones have locked bootloaders and you can't fet the unlock key from them (there are potentially questionable 3rd party sites selling those, turning this into a market..)

If you do unlock the device and install Lineage OS (which doesn't support more than a few devices), you now basically have a crappy camera app, probably your FreeBuds won't work properly anymore and you really should have bought a different phone.

I love Lineage OS and used it for years (OPO and other phones). It would ruin my P30P though.

loyukfai• 7 years ago

Android phones sold in China use homebrew app stores instead of Google Play already, because of censorship.

This news, if true, will affect the devices made by Huawei and sold worldwide though.

rorykoehler7• 7 years ago

Much more likely is a SaaS to manage distribution to various app stores from one interface.

ETHisso20177• 7 years ago

Hmm, interesting. Does one already exist?

Kwpolska• 7 years ago

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd will immediately lose access to updates to the Android operating system

Android security updates are part of AOSP [0]. The article explicitly mentions that Huawei still has access to Google’s OSS stuff. And besides, they couldn’t really block Huawei from accessing open-source stuff without making it closed-source or otherwise heavily restricted.

[0] https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2019-05-01

neilv3• 7 years ago

has suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware and software products except those covered by open source licenses,

Could this nudge an interesting (good/bad) development in open source?

atomicUpdate• 7 years ago

Why would this cause any change in open source at all? This is already the case for them in China.

neilv3• 7 years ago

For example, if party A wants party B using something S in particular, then S being being made "open source". And/or the accepted meanings&cultures of "open source" (or whatever the actual terminology is) changing, as A and S do their things.

rchaud2• 7 years ago

I don't know about open source, but I'd be happy to see more Android phones that don't have Google Play services and suite of surveillance apps. Not going to get that on Huawei phones, but if Huawei starts to de-emphasize the Play Store in the future, devs might start looking to move away from Google Play distribution and towards APK downloads on their own sites.

Let's face it, the "app economy" doesn't exist unless you're on iOS and can count on a paying audience. On Android, your only hope for monetization is a free to play Clash of Clans/Candy Crush clone that's jam-packed with ads, tracking and microtransactions.

ETHisso20177• 7 years ago

Quick question - if someone buys a Huawei phone without Play Store and Gmail, could they just download those things later? E.g. could it be done aftermarket?

KaoruAoiShiho4• 7 years ago

I believe they cannot, Google demands certification before allowing their apps to be used. It's impossible to sideload google apps.

the_pwner224• 7 years ago

Unless this google certification is stored in hardware, that's not the case. You can flash Android phones with a custom bootloader, use that to flash AOSP (open source core android)/LineageOS, and for most people doing that the next step is to flash gapps on top of that.

Here's a popular gapps distribution: https://opengapps.org/#aboutsection

Google's requirements mainly apply to OEMs bundling gapps into their stock images.

dannyr• 7 years ago

Google apps and a lot of other apps need Google Play Services to work.

Markoff6• 7 years ago

they have their own AppGallery store and email app, after all gmail it's crap compared to Nine, Aqua mail or Maildroid, honestly don't understand people using it

so in the end bakery competition could benefit from this Google push, dev can choose another store not stealing 30% of their money

attila_ferencz• 7 years ago

bad news for eu mobile market. i guess we have to buy iphones again? half the features and double the price :(

CalmStorm• 7 years ago

This doesn't affect much of Huawei's Chinese market as Google is banned in China anyway. However, this will have a huge impact on Huawei's overseas market, and it is hard for Huawei to come up with a backup plan. At the end of the day, Baidu (and other Google equivalent Chinese counterparts) has a negligible presence outside China.

theossuary• 7 years ago

I don't know anything about the supply chain for data center hardware, but it seems more likely that China would intercept shipments of say Cisco and Juniper gear and modify them (something the NSA has done) instead of building hardware with a backdoor in it?

When you buy a Cisco router do they provide a "chain of custody" proving it didn't come from or go through hostile countries? I understand these routers have a Secure Boot feature, but I can't imagine that'd defend against physical modifications.

If security was actually the goal, shouldn't we have a process to verify any piece of hardware; instead of just completely trusting some companies and not others?

This just feels like security theater, but I kind of get it. If the US is fighting China economically, this move makes a lot of sense.

Jolter• 7 years ago

This article is about Android software shipped from Google to Huawei. It does not mention data center hardware. (And in fact, I'm pretty sure Huawei are not even in the data center market. They supply telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics.

no1youknowz• 7 years ago

but it seems more likely that China would intercept shipments of say Cisco

Not sure if you have been paying attention to the stock market. Many of the companies which are up are ones who have eliminated their ties with China [0]. Cisco is one such company whose stock rose recently [1] as a result of moving from China [2].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m-vck6ebnE

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_uohGLOiK0

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/312f7b52-7765-11e9-be7d-6d846537a...

neilv3• 7 years ago

If this sticks, is there yet a comprehensive analysis of all the implications?

product50• 7 years ago

This is likely going to hurt Huawei a lot more than Google. Losing access to latest Android versions or Google apps will make it more difficult for their phones to gain adoption globally.

stefano• 7 years ago

It's pushing chinese firms to create an Android competitor. In the long term, this might hurt Google a lot.

Mikeb855• 7 years ago

Huawei is the world's second largest phone manufacturer. It'll hurt Google, and Huawei in Europe/Canada.

traject• 7 years ago

This move will permanently destroy trust between Chinese OEM manufacturers with Google the same way revocation of private property reduces trust in the value of property. Long term wise, this could permanently splinter Android market share especially in overseas regions like India or Africa where Chinese phones command a large portion of the marketshare.

onei2• 7 years ago

I guess this is a thinly veiled attack on China, but I'm a bit confused why there's a feud between the US and China in the first place. Perhaps my ignorance is down to being British and a bit out of the loop, but could someone give a rough outline on what the underlying motives for this are?

yding13• 7 years ago

There are many reasons, but there are two fundamental ones: Projections that the Chinese economy will overtake the US and Made in China 2025.

The first is easy to explain. The US likes being number 1, and if anyone else, whether the Chinese or the Japanese or the Indians looks like they're going to be number 1, the US doesn't like it.

The second is this: for the last 40-50 years, the US and China have been in a hugely mutually beneficial relationship, at least on the corporate level. American companies outsourced many of its lower wage lower skilled manufacturing to China and China has saved those companies a ton of money and made their owners a lot more profit. In order for China's economy to keep growing though, the Chinese believed, correctly, that they needed to move up the food chain since their labor is not as cheap as it once was. So they identified 10 "industries of the future" where they want their companies to dominate. American companies are, once again correctly, worried that since these are the industries that we would also like to dominate, that the Chinese, if they are successful, will literally eat our lunch.

There's a bunch of other stuff relating to the South China Sea, Taiwan, forced IP transfer, hacking, trade subsidies, etc. that are also causing tensions, but those two are probably the biggest ones.

generic_user• 7 years ago

thats a good summation, it's important to note that the "Made in China 2025" is the explicit Official policy issued by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. So this is not interpretation or exaggeration. The official policy of The Peoples Republic of China is to raise the domestic sourcing of essentially all high-tech high-value goods to 75% domestic production. And also export these goods into other markets.

They may not state it publicly but I think all the industrialied producer economies Fron the US to Europe and Asia are scared to death of the implications China 2025 has for there own high-tech high-value industries.

ars• 7 years ago

https://www.afr.com/technology/web/security/how-chinese-hack...

Huawei stole secrets from Nortel that eventually caused it to collapse, it only got worse from there. They've stolen IP from many other countries, and at this point the US is accusing them of not just stealing IP actual actually working with Chinese intelligence to make sure all Huawei devices can be hacked by China.

Your being British and out of the loop is pretty bad because your government is just as much of a target.

Leary• 7 years ago

China is the only country that can threaten the US' status as the number one superpower in the world. Huawei's lead in 5G technology is broadly seen in Washington as a threat to US interests even though the US government has no concrete evidence of wrong doing.

roboys3• 7 years ago

China's population will actually age too fast to continue to be #1 in the world, by the end of this century India will pass China in GDP & population size, based on projections.

crdoconnor2• 7 years ago

Motives:

* Trump has been on at China for a long time.

* US establishment growing increasingly worried about the sophistication of Chinese tech and are viewing Huawei as a strategic threat. Especially since the latest generation of Chinese telecoms tech has arguably leapfrogged western offerings. Free trade works brilliantly until you stop being the top dog.

* NSA doesn't the idea of Chinese being able to use their tech to spy on US. They'd prefer domestic US companies build tech to spy on us for them instead.

* "National security concerns" is kind of a "get of jail free card" when it comes to escaping WTO rules on protectionism, so it fits in pretty well with the rest of the trade war.

pbhjpbhj7• 7 years ago

BBC Click covered the issue https://youtu.be/yCzNHi9TBCQ?t=690 onwards. They say Huawei claim to be 18months ahead [12m35] of everyone with 5G, and their interview with UK's intelligence advisor [16m20 onwards] suggested that there's not really a security problem.

They do talk about [17m04+] the possibility of the network being shutdown and the fallout of that, and have a dramatisation.

aristophenes2• 7 years ago

Let me give it a shot with actual references, and years of paying attention, not whatever I heard the talking heads say last night.

The US perceives the economic relationship with China to be one way. Prior to the recent trade flair ups, China was given preferential treatment, perhaps as part of a strategy to create a geopolitical ally instead of an enemy through trade. This appeared to be working for several decades with China opening up to the world and giving the appearance of freer markets and more democratization as they became wealthier. As their economy continued to grow and modernize, the trade imbalance between the United States became huge ($539 Billion in imports in 2018, only $120 Billion in exports [0]). This means that each year hundreds of billions of dollars flows directly from the US economy into the Chinese economy. In addition, with President Xi the country appears to be sliding back towards a nationalistic totalitarianism.

While both countries can still benefit from this trade, the US government is taking the stance that China has been benefiting and the US has not. The reasons that are most often cited are that the US was open to almost all Chinese imports, while many US imports were restricted or taxed more heavily than local goods [1]. Worse than that, if a US company wanted to operate in China, they were required to do so through Chinese partners that would own half of a joint venture, and intellectual property would be shared with them. After a short term benefit, all of a sudden the Chinese partner would be running their own factories, and competing against the US company with the US companies own technology. These companies are often state owned and receive funding that is considered to be anti free trade and is generally illegal in most international agreements (see the legal squabbles between Airbus and Boeing for reference). Finally the US company would be squeezed by the Chinese government (national or local), and all sorts of issues that wouldn't impact the local company would mysteriously befall the foreign company. After local Chinese companies were created, funded and protected in China by the Chinese government, they could compete with their former US partners around the world.

Therefore while the US market was open to China, the Chinese market is not really open to the US. Finally, it has been widely known for a long time that China hosts state sponsored industrial espionage units that hack companies around the world and steal intellectual property to provide to Chinese companies[2]. US companies will spend billions of dollars researching how to do something, and then a Chinese company can just start producing it, sometimes even before the US company does. Finally, it seems like laws are not enforced in favor of US victims. If a US company steals and sells Chinese IP, they can be successfully sued in US courts. If a Chinese company steals and sells US IP, no enforcement is taken. This is a huge problem especially for small inventors, the moment they create something they lose the market to cheap Chinese knockoffs, and have no power to protect their brand or invention.

For these reasons and others, China is viewed as having a predatory trade relationship with the United States. I've heard that Huawei in particular is known to have gotten a big jump by outright stealing Cisco's router and selling it[3], and has continued with similar tactics, alongside the accusations that it is essentially an arm of Chinese intelligence services and provides backdoors in their products. I've actually heard from Chinese friends that Huawei was very proud of their ability to steal Cisco's router and it is used as a case study.

And while all this is happening, the US had a special trade relationship with China such that it was cheaper to ship goods to individuals in the US from China, instead of from inside the US itself[4].

So basically a viewpoint that I tend to agree with is that this is all about resetting the trade relationship to a normal one between peers. The US is no longer supporting a third world country, but dealing with a fellow world power that is fully capable of taking care of itself. I am confused myself why it is being portrayed any other way, and what the motivations are for doing so. It seems to me that the US has demands to be treated fairly and have an equal trading relationship (according to their point of view), and if that doesn't happen the US can impose tariffs that will rebalance trade between the two countries.

[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-all-the-stuff-the-us... [1] https://www.export.gov/article?id=China-Import-Tariffs [2] (pdf) https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/fireeye-www/services/pdf... [3] https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c... [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how-the-...

0xDEFC0DE• 7 years ago

So basically a viewpoint that I tend to agree with is that this is all about resetting the trade relationship to a normal one between peers.

Fairly sure you're wrong on this, the US now wants an advantageous relationship. Not an even score.

Just returning to even ground would let China keep the advantages it has reaped.

megaremote2• 7 years ago

The US perceives the economic relationship with China to be one way.

This is ridiculous. No one thinks it is one way. The spanish sending south american gold back to spain was one way.

What is actually happening, is some people think it is unfairly biased towards China.

sofaofthedamned• 7 years ago

How does this affect Huawei's base station business? They are massive in Europe.

martinald• 7 years ago

Also interested to know. AFIAK Huawei is being used for all UK 5G rollouts, and there are already 1000s of masts up (though not commercially active yet) for 5G. Plus I imagine they have a very big marketshare of LTE kit going in as well.

Huawei is also the vast majority of cabinets for VDSL in the UK (the ECI alternative which was deployed has been pulled as was really low quality compared to the Huawei kit). My rough guess there is at least 20,000 DSLAMs on nearly every streeet corner that are built by Huawei.

At least in the UK it is hard to see how the country can run without this kit, and it would be an enormous undertaking to pull it out. I'm sure many other European countries are the same as Huawei's kit is definitely technically the best for this kind of stuff as far as my knowledge goes.

wpdev_632• 7 years ago

Sad to see as they make some compelling phones with outrageously great prices[0]. I used to think about the privacy problems with buying a chinese phone but this day and age where facebook is selling your data to the highest bidder and the fusion centers crawling all over our cellphone - who cares? I'd rather have the chinese have my data than the US companies/gov't(only because I will never visit their country), though they wouldn't be exclusive in this case.

[0] https://www.banggood.com/Xiaomi-Mi-Play-Global-Version-5_84-...

nAwYz• 7 years ago

Xiaomi and Huawei are not the same company

wpdev_632• 7 years ago

Sorry - mislinked. Still wouldn't be surprised if Xiaomi get's the banhammer from the US gov't though.

kuyan• 7 years ago

It seems so, though my personal experience with their phones has been hit and miss. The specs look great on the box, but the phones themselves seem to have poor QC and support when things go wrong.

That said, others have only had good experiences. YMMV.

cyrix100• 7 years ago

The outrageously great prices comment got me thinking about all the IP theft allegations [0]. I wonder if the relatively lower prices are a reflection of the reduced R&D overhead compared to other companies that would otherwise need to recover that initial investment.

[0] https://www.androidauthority.com/huawei-theft-bonus-program-...

pishpash• 7 years ago

So you think Apple is still recouping R&D costs, or just padding their margins for shareholders?

Markoff6• 7 years ago

time to fully embrace their own AppGallery app store, in the end Google can be shooting their own leg, users won't care what app store they use when they find there what are they looking for and play store is shitshow for years ignoring UX missing basic search filters or sorting

GMS is bigger issue though WhatsApp or signal work both fine without gapps, not sure about other messengers I don't use and in general it's hard to find app which has really problems without gapps other than ridesharing apps with last devs relying on gmaps

cromwellian7• 7 years ago

In a way, this helps Apple (and other Android vendors) and in a way, it hurts it. Huawei phones recently have shipped market leading cameras that blow pretty much all other Android and iPhone cameras out of the water. They took a commanding lead as a premium device manufacturer. Hurting their non-China markets gives breathing space to others.

However, if I were Apple, I'd be really worried about retaliation. Apple is wholly dependent on manufacturing in China and its supply chain, and even small disruptions could cause huge mounts of pain.

avocado43• 7 years ago

In what world is Huawei a leading premium device manufacturer? Do you have a source?

unixhero• 7 years ago

He is right.

Mikeb855• 7 years ago

Asking for a source for an assertion that is a fairly well-known fact is simply lazy.

gsich2• 7 years ago

In this one.

cromwellian7• 7 years ago

Do you consider Samsung a premium Android manufacturer? I assume you're not defining "premium" == "Apple". If you admit that there are premium Android phones, and that Samsung is one of the manufacturers, well, Huawei is on track to surpass Samsung in units sold, AND it has the best reviewed camera. It blows away the iPhone X series, especially at low light, but also produces incredible night/low light protography beating even the Google Pixel Night Sight mode.

in China, they are now the most expensive phones, people are willing to pay more $$$ to get the top of the line Huawei than an iPhone which used to be the previous "look am me, I'm rich and trendy" device to own there. It's one reason why iPhone sales in China have declined.

There's no world in which you can't claim they are not a world leading phone manufacturer and that their devices aren't premium. Sure, the heavy modded Android sucks and is probably spyware and you can't get vanilla android on it, but hardware wise, it is premium. The P30 Pro runs for almost $1000.

People who live in the US kind of live in a reality distortion field around Apple, and are somewhat blind to what is happening in Europe and Asia. And this complacence is a pretty bad way to evaluate your competitors.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-threatening-Samsung-for...

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/12/18221598/huawei-apple-chi...

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/10/18285123/huawei-p30-pro-r...

arebours• 7 years ago

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS44188018

ulfw4• 7 years ago

In a world outside the US, where the Huawei P30 Pro has the best camera combo, one of the fastest processors and a premium. build (and price).

costcopizza• 7 years ago

How much more expensive would an iPhone be that’s assembled in the US?

ChuckNorris89• 7 years ago

Cost is not the reason all consumer electronics are made in China. Actually, manufacturing there is now more expensive than Estern Europe.

They build them there because all the supply chain is already there. In Shenzhen, the capacitors, resistors, PCBs and most chips are sourced in bulk from around the block. That's something no other country in the West or even East has and it's such a complex interconnected ecosystem that you can't replicate it anywhere else right now.

Most of the CNC, tooling and moulding craftsmen are there as well, the west has far too few left to be able to take over such volumes. Training so many can take years and that's assuming you even find enough people willing to be trained.

otterley• 7 years ago

A lot more, if it could be made at all:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-an...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones-apple-...

Despegar4• 7 years ago

The last thing China wants during a trade war is to have the 3 million people in Apple's supply chain unemployed and angry.

This particular leverage is also why iMessage isn't blocked in China.

fabianhjr5• 7 years ago

Apple isn't the only company in China, plus they could buy-back or eminent domain closed factories and assign them to SOEs.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Foxconn#/Major_customers

shshhdhs• 7 years ago

More likely because Apple gave China the master encryption keys: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/25/apple-moves-icloud-encrypt...

opportune3• 7 years ago

iMessage isn't blocked in China because it doesn't need to be. China passed a law forcing Apple to put all Chinese users' iCloud data in a Chinese datacenter. Since Apple allows for account recovery, they store account keys in that datacenter. Anyone with privileged access to certain production resources in iCloud China should be able to access basically all Chinese users' data.

The one exception is apparently Apple's keychain as per https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/01/16/icloud-i.... But, if the hardware used to enforce the security is different in China, even that could be cracked.

Mikeb855• 7 years ago

The last thing China wants during a trade war is to have the 3 million people in Apple's supply chain unemployed and angry.

As an autocracy, China could easily compensate workers for any loss of work. But another obvious answer is that if Apple were banned in China, Huawei and Xiaomi would pick up the slack.

If China really wanted to, they could shut down all iPhone production for the immediate future.

Tsubasachan2• 7 years ago

The only thing the Chinese government has to do is explain that American imperialist white piggus are trying to destroy the Chinese people and they wouldn't even be lying for once.

Nationalism is a play card in every country.

tooltalk3• 7 years ago

Apple's been losing marketshare (and unit sales) while Chinese domestic companies' market share has been growing, so that balances things out. The world's #1 smartphone maker Samsung moved much (50%>) of their smartphone assembly operation out of China and hardly anyone noticed it.

ezconnect4• 7 years ago

Once the population boycott a brand or a country the Chinese propaganda and people really do boycott them. Read the news about South Korea and Japan trade wars. The Chinese even tried to burn down a Toyota factory.

noobermin2• 7 years ago

They could still hazard it.

rqs• 7 years ago

However, if I were Apple, I'd be really worried about retaliation.

I think this view is too narrow. For the Chinese government, there is something more important than revenge. Why kick that cash machine out of your country if it still paying your people paid and make then happy?

I guess the retaliation will come in a different form, even something out of the trade section maybe, depends on what's on Xi's table.

partiallypro4• 7 years ago

You do know that China actively has concentration camps, right? They use data and tech they've stolen to do it. You really think that's the same as Facebook serving you ads? Give me a break.

oblio3• 7 years ago

Well, from his perspective, as long as he's never going to China, do those camps matter?

oblio3• 7 years ago

I like the downvotes for expressing a cynical perspective :)))

pjmlp2• 7 years ago

Like Guantanamo?

tlear• 7 years ago

Anyone who ended up in Guntanamo would have had a bullet to head in PRC, they would not bother with a camp. It is for hundreds of thousands of undesirables(like Muslims etc).

When USA ships it’s Muslims into a camp in Nevada desert and starts re-educating them let us know

ubercow132• 7 years ago

They use data stolen from western users of their phones to aid in the operation of concentration camps? You're saying that by giving Chinese companies their data by using a Chinese phone, GP should consider themselves complicit in helping China run their concentration camps? What?

roboys3• 7 years ago

50% of US inmates (prison slave labor participants) are African American, sounds pretty concentrated here as well.

I don't believe the whole continent of Africa has 1.5 million Africans in jail, this is a uniquely American outcome.

megaremote2• 7 years ago

Ok, yes, that is true. But the USA commits war crimes and doesn't want to be brought before court over them. So I should stop using US goods if I gave a shit about human rights, right?

roca11• 7 years ago

Throwing up your hands and saying "everyone's bad" is just moral laziness. I'm not American and it's obvious China is far worse than the USA in terms of human rights.

dang2• 7 years ago

This comment crosses into nationalistic and political flamewar and that is not ok here.

No (I sense I need to add), I'm not defending concentration camps, just defending HN against burning itself to a crisp. If you want to participate on HN, please contribute to thoughtful conversation. "Concentration camps [...] give me a break" does not qualify.

Moreover, we've had to warn you about this exact thing before. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site more to heart? Our hope is not to be one more place on the internet where people bring bags of clubs to bash each other with.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19955289 and marked it off-topic.

partiallypro4• 7 years ago

I don't see how pointing out a country has concentration camps (reported by multiple outlets, like the NYTs) is "nationalistic," or against the spirit of the site. In fact the story has been reported here...A LOT.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china%20muslims&sort=byPopular...

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china%20concentration&sort=byP...

I don't see anyone being "warned" about their -submissions- on this very topic. Maybe I'm missing something, but it feels like this "policy" is not evenly enforced. In fact a US political topic in regards to rights is currently on the front page:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19959428

chvid3• 7 years ago

I always wondered what would it take for a company to develop an alternative mobile operating system?

To me the combination of Android and iOS always was the perfect mold around the business of high-end mobile phones.

Android is given away for free; but to make a truly great end user experience hardware and software needs to be integrated. Like it is for iOS. But that requires an enourmous investment; and there is no "natural" piecemeal way to grow there as your business always would be competing with peers that use the "free" platform.

But this gives Huawei, a massive and capable engineering company, no choice but to build an alternative.

This is an extreme situation; but hopefully there will come some true innovation out of it.

stoppergoo• 7 years ago

At this point I speculate a lot are on iOS to avoid android, and vice versa. Any offering that hwei makes will surely not move the needle from either camp, but it’s good to see some new competition

chvid3• 7 years ago

If this escalation is continued; Apple will likely loose access to the Chinese market creating a huge open space for a high-end mobile phone offering.

chvid3• 7 years ago

But it is also worth noting the ZTE story which ended with ZTE paying a 1B "fine":

https://www.androidauthority.com/zte-reportedly-will-pay-us-...

mrtksn• 7 years ago

Microsoft tried hard to have a mobile operating system, there were others too but the problem is that nobody cares for the operating system if there is no viable ecosystem around it.

GordonS• 7 years ago

And Microsoft's mobile OS was actually good - many lamented its demise.

Didn't Samsung also create a new mobile OS in recent times? I wonder how that's doing now?

0815test• 7 years ago

There were lots of "alternative" mobile OS's before AOSP, and even before iOS - AOSP simply got critical mass behind it in a way that other OS's didn't. But Huawei isn't going to push for an open alternative either - even their versions of AOSP have always been among the most closed and hardest to "mod". As far as openness goes, Purism/Librem, and the pmOS community project remain our best bets.

tgsovlerkhgsel4• 7 years ago

I always wondered what would it take for a company to develop an alternative mobile operating system?

Creating an app ecosystem out of nowhere. This was the same thing that killed all competitors to Apple and Android.

iamnothere2• 7 years ago

Sailfish, Tizen, and KaiOS exist, and there are some other Linux-based alternatives out there as well. Unfortunately none of these have good market share yet. I don't know much about the business side of mobile OS development, but it must be difficult to gain and keep market share if even MS couldn't succeed.

AsyncAwait3• 7 years ago

This was expected. Huawei now presents a serious competition to the likes of Apple, so the 'free market' in the U.S. responds by...shutting down the competition.

Now I know the counterargument is about Chinese protectionism, but it is the U.S. who has always championed free market capitalism and led interventions in order to forcibly open other markets to its exports.

As this shows however, this belief in the free market is anything but principled.

ubercow132• 7 years ago

It seems like the exact opposite is true. China in some sense doesn't abide by free market or free trade principles, and this can be seen as a principled stand against that.

AsyncAwait3• 7 years ago

Except China has not locked U.S. smartphone makers like Apple anywhere near to the degree that the U.S. is targeting Huawei.

Also, China does not necessarily claim to be as free-market as the U.S. does and as far as I am aware, has not let interventionist wars in order to open up a foreign market to its companies.

What I am talking here is principle. The U.S. claims to have free speech for example, China does not. But in that instance the U.S. sticks by its principles and maintains its free speech protections, despite China not having them.

Why is this different when it comes to the free market? A concept the U.S. has in recent history definitely fought harder worldwide than the pursuit of free speech.

bjourne• 7 years ago

But the EU does. Yet Trump's steel tariffs hit EU countries too.

gonvaled7• 7 years ago

Why does the US not go to the WTO then? That's the standard process for conflict resolution. Those are the rules set up by the US.

andr• 7 years ago

I may have missed this, but have there been any specific accusations against Huawei? It is clear Chinese actors hack and steal IP, but have those been connected to Huawei, or are they just the easiest victim for the US to retaliate against?

Joakal• 7 years ago

None, Australian government has banned Huawei for government work. Me and others have demanded the government to ban them from consumers but no. Huawei is allowed to sell to unsuspecting businesses/consumers in Australia.

Huawei could sue the Australian government over the ban: https://www.afr.com/business/telecommunications/huawei-won-t...

bartimus• 7 years ago

When it comes to security everyone's guilty until proven innocent.

johannes12343212• 7 years ago

And it is impossible to prove innocent.

tehlike• 7 years ago

China has apps with plenty of install base. That is probably the bigger threat noone has really noticed yet...

rocqua2• 7 years ago

There were reports out of the UK about bad software hygiene, with some implications of bug-doors.

mutt2016• 7 years ago

We are talking about Huawei and not Cisco right? They seem to have a constant stream of the problems and nobody seems to give a shit.

room271• 7 years ago

I'm not sure this is really about Huawei at all, so in a sense it doesn't really matter if they have (up to now) done anything wrong. It's really about the extent we feel comfortable trusting the Chinese government.

Now obviously, every country has its own agenda, but there are (arguably) stronger reasons to be concerned about China than most others. They are undemocratic and suppress significant parts of their population (the Uighurs, Tibetans, Christians, ..), don't believe in free speech or freedom of religion, but also have a large economy and military presence. Now of course, other countries are not saints, but the differences with China (and in particular its disregard for human rights) make future disagreement much more likely.

jandrewrogers• 7 years ago

Nothing new this time around that I know of, though Huawei has admitted to specific allegations many times in the past (e.g. wholesale stealing of Cisco's software in 2003, got caught physically stealing Motorola wireless tech several years ago, etc). Huawei were banned from sensitive infrastructure in Five Eyes for security reasons circa 2013/2014, along with Lenovo (against which there were specific allegations IIRC).

This is just an expansion of official government policy put in place during the Obama administration to the rest of the private sector.

tl;dr: this isn't new territory for Huawei.

roca11• 7 years ago

Huawei is effectively one arm of the Chinese government, and the Chinese state hackers are another arm of that same government.

dx0342• 7 years ago

Is Cisco that much less aligned with US government interest? I have the feeling it's just down to which government you want to trust.

edwinyzh• 7 years ago

FYI: Trump says U.S. "wants to be the leader' in 5G development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Gakw0dPvE

kyboren• 7 years ago

I assume Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor Graphics, Xilinx, Intel PSG, Microsemi, Lattice, and Qualcomm are also affected by the Huawei blacklist.

Can Huawei survive without these critical components and EDA tools? If Huawei ignores the loss of licenses and uses existing software and libraries to develop future products, will those be banned from US and EU markets?

maimeowmeow• 7 years ago

Do they even respect licenses to being with?

tgsovlerkhgsel4• 7 years ago

I doubt shipping phones with easily identifiable pirated Qualcomm IP to western countries is going to work well.

baybal24• 7 years ago

EDA tools?

I never believed it was ever a case of Cadence being warezed given it is an extremely niche product locked down under ridiculous multiple DRMs, but I was shown few FTPs around with multimegabuck EDAs and semiconductor simulation packages that are probably in use by less than 100 companies worldwide being warezed like as it they were MS Word or something.

yding13• 7 years ago

A big one that people haven't mentioned is ARM. Huawei can get by without Qualcomm chips. But I don't know how they're going to be able to keep up without an ARM license. And it's not like they could just switch to Intel even if that was an actually viable option.

longnosf• 7 years ago

Why would there be a ban from EU? ARM is a UK company owned by a japanese group, Mentor Graphics is a subsidiary of a german group. The ban is an unilateral decision from the US. So Huawei can get on with these two without too much hurdles.

jokoon• 7 years ago

I avoided those phones like the plague, guess it was a good choice.

I bet it has a lot to do with the whole huawei backdoor story.

To be honest outsourcing such sensitive consumer device to a police state has not been a good idea for a long time.

I hope it will give good reasons to consider designing either open smartphones, or minimalist os designs with c++ or webasm apps. If smartphones get bloated, they won't be affordable anymore.

rocqua2• 7 years ago

I wouldn't rule out a protectionist push from the US gov. as being behind this.

johannes12343212• 7 years ago

Not sure that giving it to a prism+xkeyscore state is thaaat much better. And yes legal protection in the US is a lot better than China, while I as European have little power in either, but also hardly an alternative.

fabianhjr5• 7 years ago

The US doing some market manipulation again; good thing they want to stop companies and countries from spying on people. /s

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

kpU8efre7r2• 7 years ago

Are you against warrants?

fabianhjr5• 7 years ago

I am against warrantless searches and seizures. (Which PRISM and other 3-letter agencies' programs are notorious of doing)

Mikeb855• 7 years ago

I wonder if this will be the catalyst for foreign companies to stop using US technology. For everything that the US has done to other countries over the years, US tech companies have somewhat maintained their independence. Now that US companies are being compelled to not sell to various Chinese companies, it could be a wake-up call to the rest of the world that US companies are now simply another arm of the US government.

rorykoehler7• 7 years ago

As a European founder (small app company) it will definitely add another dimension to how I think about our strategic roadmap. You can be certain that large non-US corporates will be far more aggressive in their approach to this problem.

roca11• 7 years ago

These rules don't make US companies "another arm of the US government". US companies can (and do!) push back against the US government, through the courts, political parties, and ultimately elections.

Chinese companies, on the other hand, have no such recourse against their government.

gonvaled7• 7 years ago

These rules don't make US companies "another arm of the US government". US companies can (and do!) push back against the US government, through the courts, political parties, and ultimately elections.

Show me the push back to the following:

- NSA backdooring

- The whole Prisma scandal

- The current trade war with China

And tell me how EU governments benefit from US companies avoiding taxes, and repatriating revenues generated in the European market to the US.

The US is a highly unreliable, politicized provider. The US uses technology to steal data and taxes from other countries. And abuses its position to impose its will.

We can not build our digital infrastructure like this anymore.

I assume EU governments are following this very closely.

dharma1• 7 years ago

Think this will have long reaching ramifications. Huawei is much closer to the Chinese government than ZTE was - this won't go without repercussions.

A version of Android/replacement to Android that is used by most Chinese phones but not in the hands of Google seems like the inevitable outcome.

We already know China can produce world class hardware - I wonder how they will fare at operating systems.

It's not an easy task.

tonyaiken• 7 years ago

Do you know ZTE is owned by Chinese government?

xiechao06• 7 years ago

Huawei ex-employee here, all Chinese private companies with employees over 30 must have a CCP committee, actually, Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE, .etc. are fully controlled by CCP.

rl32• 7 years ago

I'd love to see a forensic level reverse engineering/technical audit of the Nexus 6P hardware.

In reality Chinese intelligence likely wasn't stupid enough to try anything there, but I often wonder how many eyes Google had on hardware security for that project considering it was Huawei making their flagship phone at the time.

I also wonder if there were any NSA efforts to tear the thing apart, since they are likely better qualified and have more experience in that realm.

StavrosK2• 7 years ago

Why is China so likely to bug the phone but the NSA isn't?

rl32• 7 years ago

Why is China so likely to bug the phone but the NSA isn't?

Nowhere did I touch on the probability of the NSA bugging anything. Nor did I state it was likely that the Chinese would have placed a backdoor in the Nexus 6P. On the contrary, I think you misread my comment.

roca11• 7 years ago

Even if the NSA backdoors phones, you have to consider which government you trust more. The US government isn't great but China's is far worse.

roca11• 7 years ago

It's difficult to do a thorough audit even if you trust the chip layout as designed. Effectively impossible if you don't. http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/543048/26931843/146401...

ghobs913• 7 years ago

To all those stating that Huawei should just make their own OS, it's nowhere near that simple. Forking Android is the easy part, building an app ecosystem that thousands of developers across the globe actively partake in is incredibly difficult. Microsoft couldn't even pull it off with Windows Phone.

I predict their own Android fork and China-focused app store will do fine in China, but struggle big time in other markets.

walrus01• 7 years ago

Domestically within China, Huawei and other phones already use non-google-app-stores.

https://technode.com/2018/08/13/android-china-q2-2018/

baybal24• 7 years ago

Well, not only in China, but pretty much every other country where demand for Gaps is not an issue, and it was from day one for them as an Android vendor.

It was the one and only Chinese brand with whom Google made a Nexus phone in the past — at least in part to lessen their enthusiasm in throwing out Google market in Western countries

ehsankia• 7 years ago

Well Play Store is not accessible in China, so they kinda have to.

mayama• 7 years ago

Will Huawei still have access to TSMC, Samsung fabs etc? I think Hardware should be more of an issue for them than software. Chinese phones already use some alternative to play store iirc.

ghobs913• 7 years ago

It appears they're only losing access to American hardware and software. So that would mean Android, Gorilla Glass screens, Qualcomm processors, etc.

gameswithgo• 7 years ago

the could make the phone an actual computer. that can download and run apps from where-ever. many of us are starving for that.

WrtCdEvrydy• 7 years ago

There are plenty of open source third party stories such as FDroid and Aptoide and Amazon's own store. On Android, you can even load APKs directly.

brownbat2• 7 years ago

Agree in principle, though can't we get that by just allowing unauthorized sources?

I guess you don't get the relative security of app stores, and there's no widespread culture of free apps on phones like on PCs.

I'd really love, not a new phone or OS, but just an app store that works under a different model. Cheap or free for developers to post, but curated to exclude the most predatory forms of monetization.

Faark• 7 years ago

Windows Phone was in a way worse situation. They had to solve an M to N problem, getting apps to attract users while also getting users to attract developers. They tried to leverage their PC install base, but that apparently failed.

The Chinese market on the other hand will always have users, is huge and I presume most developers won't be willing to give up on it. If they do, someone else will serve their customers and might become a future competitor globally.

China-focused apps will only have to re-implement google services. That sound a lot easier to me than supporting an entirely different OS. If those versions can run on google phones as well, devs have the option to drop the play store version down the line to save cost.

I wouldn't bet a lot on it, but this might be the best chance we ever had to get a real play store competitor.

baybal24• 7 years ago

Win mobile was a dominant mobile platform until Microsoft didn't nuke itself with non backward compatible, rewritten from scratch WinMo 7

Palm was a dominant mobile platform until Palm nuked itself with 5 years of clownade with Palm OS 6

Symbian was the biggest, most dominant mobile OS globally until Nokia didn't decide to simply trow it away.

JM2E was the most largely adapted app platform, even into early Android years, until Oracle/Sun simply stopped licensing it...

Now think just how thin is the ice Google is on now with it flirting with idea of "rebooting" Android with Fucsia

yskchu• 7 years ago

The difference between Huawei's situation and Microsoft's situation is that Microsoft's app store is not compatible with Android or IOS (obviously, different OS)

While if Huawei uses the Android open source base, the only thing they have to do is entice developers to submit another copy of their app to their store, which is a much lower barrier than the one MS faced to develop a whole new ecosystem

ghobs913• 7 years ago

While true, this is also the case for Amazon's app store, and their app selection is a fraction of the Play store to this day.

morpheuskafka2• 7 years ago

Not if that app depends on Google Play Services, which most developers targeting "Android" take for granted.

ETHisso20177• 7 years ago

The barrier would be that many Android apps also leverage Google's in-built services, which would be unavailable on the upcoming generation of Huawei phones. The question then becomes to what degree could someone replicate those services, and how quickly.

platform• 7 years ago

Well, if Huawei would say a) here is our store b) your app will be marketed to Chinese population (as long as your backend servers run on Chinese infra)

then, I think they have a chance to attract app developers. Otherwise, I doubt it.

seppin• 7 years ago

I predict their own Android fork and China-focused app store will do fine in China, but struggle big time in other markets.

Why would they need it to be popular anywhere other than China?

rchaud2• 7 years ago

Because they have spent years trying to increase market share in Europe and South America, and are only now seeing the fruits of that labor. In the Chinese market they have to compete on price against Xiaomi, Oppo and many, many others, whereas in overseas markets their offerings (minus the P30 flagship) have a big price advantage over Samsung and Apple.

onetimemanytime2• 7 years ago

what if all Chinese companies create an appstore? Might have to do it. These things, and I'm not passing judgment on them, are simply pushing the Chinese to be self-sufficient on everything. Stroke of the Trump pen and X chip for your hardware is denied.

matiasb• 7 years ago

In my country, Paraguay, the government just signed a contract with Huawei for a fiber optic connectivity project.

cfarm5• 7 years ago

I think this creates a nationalistic retaliation -- "We don't need America. We can do it ourselves, and better."

rorykoehler7• 7 years ago

Not only from China.

seanmcdirmid3• 7 years ago

Before Trump I would have disagreed with you (at least concerning the USA).

cfarm5• 7 years ago

It depends on what Trump does. He may start opening up other avenues for America to get the same trade we had with China. For example, we might get friendlier with Mexico or Vietnam. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48273550

MajorBee• 7 years ago

I expect the other Asian powers and Europe to be sitting up and paying keen attention to these events. Too many of the world's vital technologies are beholden to the US government's interests, interests that may swing one way or the other every few years depending on what the presiding ideology is. In a space as important and all-pervading as internet-enabled smartphones, both parties of the global duopoly of Apple-Android are headquartered in the US, with China playing the crucial role of hosting the world's factories.

I hope this triggers a move towards more decentralization of smartphone infrastructure (and the internet in general), hardware to software.

jasoneckert• 7 years ago

This is essentially another twist in the US/China tech war that is currently going on. I don't feel I have enough knowledge to speculate on its effects, but all war is bad.

mhkool2• 7 years ago

well, until today Google had a large stable market share with Android. Trump initiated the end of that. Android will have a lower share and the market is not stable any more. And everybody outside the US will think twice before buying any product where the US government can destroy its service.

mtw• 7 years ago

Was Huawei explicitly named in the executive order? To my understanding, no, so I don't get why the story focuses on Huawei. For example, Motorola, owned by chinese company Lenovo, One Plus, Xiaomi or Oppo should not use Android either.

Trump also named many other countries as threats to national security, such as Canada, Germany, Mexico, and many others. There's no reason one day South Korea enters the list and Samsung will also get blocked by executive order .

sanxiyn4• 7 years ago

Huawei is explicitly named in Federal Register 2019-10616. Lenovo, Xiaomi, etc. is not.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.g...

windexh8er8• 7 years ago

This isn't surprising. What the US government wants the government gets. I was working for a large ISP in 2010-2011 and we were considering long haul transport gear between Huawei and Infinera. All things being equal Huawei had a better cost/performance value prop. That was, until the FBI came in with a heavy handed opinion. You see at that point in time the best place to siphon data was at large ingress/egress. As I understand it there are two reasons the FBI wanted Infinera: 1) Infinera is a US based company and had to abide, like Cisco, to provide "LE" (law enforcement) capable firmware/software and 2) to keep a Chinese firm from generally gaining that position in a large ISP.

So while it's huge Google was told what to do, it's not surprising as this is business as usual. And back to an earlier point... The best place to siphon data in 2019? Your phone. Times have changed, data collection by governments hasn't.

yding13• 7 years ago

By LE capable firmware you mean that the FBI had a backdoor to eavesdrop? Wow.

windexh8er8• 7 years ago

Yes indeed [0].

[0] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/10000/10008/fe...

dsl2• 7 years ago

No, not at all. It was an extension of lawful wiretaps in to the digital age. CALEA required that manufacturers add the ability for lawful intercept to be done on their equipment by the providers that purchased them.

Law enforcement still had to go to a judge, get a court order, and take it to the ISP. The ISP could then configure the devices to siphon off traffic from a single customer to a collection device.

The same functionality and process has existed in phone networks basically since they became electronically switched.

ahoka• 7 years ago

I can assure you that every telecom equipment has lawful interception capabilities. Some countries even mandate a standard log format for metadata (Turkey does that). It's just one of the features that the operators ask for when getting their equipment, because they have to comply with local law enforcement.

mhkool2• 7 years ago

What most people forget is that in a war the other party shoots back. It may take some time but it will happen and sometimes when you do not expect it. I think that Trump's move with banning Huawei is bad for the US in the mid and long run.

option• 7 years ago

sometimes whoever shots first wins

benj1112• 7 years ago

Would any down voters care to expand?

The assertion that there's going to be consequences seems... inevitable? To me at least.

anon739967• 7 years ago

What most people forget is that in a war the other party shoots back

Yes, and these actions are the US finally shooting back after enduring years of industrial espionage, forced technology transfers, and market access restrictions.

Thorrez• 7 years ago

The best place to siphon data in 2019? Your phone.

But can't you reverse engineer your phone and see what it's doing? And can't you monitor the network data it's sending? With a backdoor in long haul transport gear, academics, researchers, random hackers, watchdog groups, journalists, competitors, etc, don't have the ability to monitor for bad behavior.

antocv• 7 years ago

AFAIK nobody has reverse-engineered even parts of the radio-firmware, the separate OS which has memory access to your other OS. Linux/Android/Iphones OS, is really just a guest, a side-show to what the radio-firmware can and is doing, ie spying.

youeseh• 7 years ago

This might provide some context as to why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JrF2X4Db84

After 9-11, the FBI's mandate was expanded from investigating terrorist attacks to include preventing them from occurring.

rayiner2• 7 years ago

Pretty much every developed country has some framework for collecting electronic data pursuant to legal process: https://tmt.bakermckenzie.com/-/media/minisites/tmt/files/20.... Country after country has decided that the government should have access to that information to perform legitimate government law enforcement functions. (The process can be abused, sure, but the functionality must be present to permit entirely proper and lawful requests for data.) And that is deeply rooted in precedent and practice. If you were a maritime shipper in the 1700s, you’d have to respond to law enforcement requests for information about the goods you transported on behalf of suspects. What’s not proper is when a foreign country that performs no law enforcement function in a jurisdiction tries to “siphon data.” Trying to draw an equivalence between the two is entirely fallacious.

hrktb• 7 years ago

If you were a maritime shipper in the 1700s, you’d have to respond to law enforcement requests for information about the goods you transported on behalf of suspects

Tell me if I am mistaken, but in these specific case it looks more to me like forbidding customers and companies from using foreign made secure vaults because the government can't force them to secretly provide a master key.

Then sure, the argument is also valid that these vault makers could be providing a master key to their respective governments, but that would be a different argument and different enforcement.

noobermin2• 7 years ago

This is fine as long as they get a warrant. As long as that's not the case then such searches should be considered unconstitutional.

enriquto2• 7 years ago

That's great! We will finally be able to buy google-free android devices from a major vendor!

usr11062• 7 years ago

We will finally be able to buy google-free android devices from a major vendor

What I read apps remain supported, but (security) updates to the firmware will stop. So Google continues to sell user data and the NSA has even easier access.

enriquto2• 7 years ago

But this is for existing devices. Forthcoming models will likely be google-free. Yay!

timkly• 7 years ago

As an Australian with a Hauwei phone, the writing is on the wall for me.

Google Android in no longer a universal platform and moving forward, I doubt I'll ever buy anything again Google or US related again in terms of tech.

This si no longer a China vs US issue, it's the US vs the world.

PixyMisa• 7 years ago

It's a China vs. the world issue. China has been spying on everyone, for years. Political, military, commercial, makes no difference.

bouncycastle• 7 years ago

Seems like we have forgotten all about Snowden.

lone_haxx0r4• 7 years ago

So has the US.

dx0342• 7 years ago

For the EU it's really just the question if you want to be spied on by the US or by China. In recent years, trade with China has probably helped the economy much more than trade with the US. At the same time, China (while certainly acting out of self interest), is somewhat predictable in their actions.

Europeans are really critical of China and their policies (esp. their human rights record). But they don't like the US that much more (apart from the Brits) and with a struggling economy you really don't want to make them choose between money and ideology.

glenndebacker• 7 years ago

You can easily find examples where you can replace China with the US. And now with the current American leadership I can't say personally that I trust the US more than China at this point.

tooltalk3• 7 years ago

Yep, and China has been playing the same game with its neighboring countries for a while. Remember how China responded when South Korea brought THAAD for missile defense?

ramblerman• 7 years ago

It's a China vs. the world issue. China has been spying on everyone, for years. Political, military, commercial, makes no difference.

So has the US though, even on it's allies as Snowden showed us.

vxNsr• 7 years ago

That's kinda hilarious coming from an australian. a country in which some companies have said they will no longer trust their employees due to the new law enforcement bills passed.

In addition australia has the same stance as nearly every western country when it comes to Huawei, namely "only we get to spy on our people, so get out"

I'm sure that the EU/australia/the west is breathing a sigh of relief that Trump did this instead of forcing them to make up some more draconian law about foreign device mfg that would have unintended consequences.

JauntyHatAngle• 7 years ago

Out of interest, what phone can you get that is not US or google related?

ionised3• 7 years ago

A simple flip/slide phone.

ezconnect4• 7 years ago

Samsung. Google services is just there because I think its required on their contract. All other services offered by Google is duplicated with their own version and variation.

gonvaled7• 7 years ago

How is this going to work exactly?

The world supply chains are supposed to avoid Huawei in the coming months / years, local politicians will be painfully explaining their citizens that Huawei is a security risk (we will need to take their word for it, no evidence is being provided) and once the US government (is this just Trump now, is the US a dictatorship?) changes its mind, then the whole world is going to start using Huawei again?

This is not going to fly.

gonvaled7• 7 years ago

The mere fact that this is possible, highlights the risk that international trade has become, specially regarding technology.

Any country holding a considerable share of the technology market should be considered a single point of failure, and diversification should take place.

The US is currently the 100-pound technology gorilla, and they are highly politicized. Very unreliable, and using its position to force its will into all kind of matters. No country should rely on the US as a single provider, to avoid being target of blackmail. It is actually surprising that we have reached the current status quo without realizing about these simple facts.

Re-decentralization of the Internet (and technology in general) is long overdue.

The same applies to other "industries". A frightening one is nuclear missiles. We are so used to the US (and the Russians) having thousands of nuclear heads that we do not care anymore. And simply because it has worked out in the past, we assume that the worse can be avoided indefinitely.

Nothing is further from the truth: the current situation guarantees that there will be a nuclear war. It is not a question of if, but when. We are a crazy president away from starting it (or maybe we have already hit the jackpot).

bubblethink2• 7 years ago

This has a few interesting potential repercussions that nobody is talking about. Since this is a lose-lose situation for both, here are a some possible outcomes: a) Google moves enough play services code into AOSP to make AOSP more functional than it is now. b) Webapps become more of a thing c) Play services become "downloadable" when you visit google.com d) Play services become standardised and/or federated

cududa2• 7 years ago

All of these scenarios assume Google actively wants to help Huawei succeed.

bubblethink2• 7 years ago

Well, it's as much about helping themselves. Huawei is a pretty large android manufacturer globally. It's a tradeoff between play services moat v/s higher adoption at reduced lock-in.

esolyt2• 7 years ago

Why isn't this titled as "Google revokes Huawei's Android license"?

"Suspends some business" is an understatement.

cfarm5• 7 years ago

This will also affect Huawei in other countries in Emea if they can't access Google play.

eitland• 7 years ago

And suddenly Samsungs stubborn idea of including their own app store and their own apps makes a lot more sense.

It has always annoyed me but I guess events like this proves why they've chosen to do it.

lukaa• 7 years ago

This is reason why verticaly integrated monopolies are bad.That is reason i use F—droid and everyone should support open source(completely open sourced programs).

stunt3• 7 years ago

Google has a long history of F...all altitude. Not a surprise.

tzfld• 7 years ago

Huawei will only be able to use the public version of Android and will not be able to get access to proprietary apps and services from Google

Sometimes this isn't a bad thing at all.

stunt3• 7 years ago

I’m amazed with some opinions on data privacy by reading some comments here.

We are now discussing US vs. China and who is better to own our data?!

That’s really sad to see how many gave up on privacy.

kanishkdudeja• 7 years ago

Wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese government retalitates by blocking all iPhone sales in China.

ChildOfChaos• 7 years ago

There is an arguement for making sure a company controlled by an outside state that cannot be trusted has nothing to do with providing important infrastructure, in fact it makes sense that this is monitored and perhaps somewhat produced by the local government to ensure maximum security.

However it’s something else entirely when a ruling given under that premise effectively knocks out that companies other businesses. I have a feeling this is more to do with Trump’s trade war than overall security.

Stopping Huawei getting android licenses effects it’s global business, it has nothing to do with the security of the communication network in the US.

Google suspends some business with Huawei

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