In another blow to Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, social media giant Facebook won’t allow Huawei to pre-install its app on its smartphones. This comes as a latest example of another American company cutting ties with Huawei after President Trump’s administration issued a trade ban against it.
While Huawei phone users will still be able to download, apps including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook’s main app itself, however, they won’t be available as pre-loaded apps such as Twitter. The apps will continue to receive updates from the Play Store.
It seems like Facebook is dealing differently with the trade ban than Google. While Google has received a temporary license to push software and security updates to existing Huawei smartphones, Facebook, according to Reuters, has denied Huawei to pre-install its app on any phone which has not left the factory.
The impact of Facebook denying the pre-install of its app is not as worrying to Huawei as other decision from Google and ARM, which will stop Huawei using core Android services and to develop its own chips. However, Facebook’s move could hurt that additional revenue stream for Huawei to deliver significant third-party apps to customers.
Last month, Huawei's consumer business CEO Yu Chengdong announced to bring the company’s own operating system which will be available later this year or in early 2020. While designing a proprietary OS represents both a challenge and a way forward for Huawei which is struggling to cope with the trade ban.
The new OS will work on mobile phones, computers, tablets, TVs, cars and smart wearable devices and will be compatible will all Android applications, says Chengdong.
