In a recent turn of events, US President Donald Trump has seemingly softened his hard stance on the whole Huawei-ban fiasco. The Chinese tech giant has now been allowed to conduct business with American companies again. In a press conference at the G20 summit, Trump said, “American companies will continue” to do business with Huawei. However, it is still unclear to what extent Huawei will and whether the statement extends to the 5G network technology that Huawei has been working on.
In response to the statement, Huawei tweeted: “U-turn? Donald Trump suggests he would allow #Huawei to once again purchase U.S. technology!”
While Huawei was preparing its own operating system (Ark OS), it can most certainly use Google’s Android platform now. To recall, Google was barred from selling the Android license to Huawei a few weeks ago. But a temporary license was soon issued by Google to update the Android OS running on existing Huawei devices. To counter the ban, Huawei was reportedly reaching out to Chinese brands such as Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi for OS partnership.
However, the ban wasn’t technically in effect because of a 90-day reprieve (it expires on August 19). Still, it was already affecting Huawei’s future product developments. It had confirmed that it was working on Ark OS whereas major product launches like the foldable Mate X and the Matebook laptops were delayed.
In spite of Trump’s statement, Huawei is still waiting for US commerce nod to resume usage on Android. "We acknowledge President Trump's comments related to Huawei over the weekend and will wait for guidance from the Department of Commerce but have nothing further to add at this time," said Tim Danks, Huawei Vice President of Risk Management and Partner Relations, when asked about its access to the Android operating system. Moreover, according to TechCrunch, the Commerce Department has told its staff to continue treating Huawei as blacklisted.
Huawei will still probably keep working on Ark OS even if it is allowed to use Android again, just to be on the safer side.