Based on materials from Android Central
It's no exaggeration to say that the company Huawei unveiled two great smartphones this week. The exceptional Mate 30 Pro and the slightly inferior base variant of the Mate 30. They replace the equally beautiful Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro with their great design, top-end features and incredible photographic capabilities. But between these two generations lies a chasm dug by American law. The new products have neither the Google Play app store, nor any elements of Google Play services at all.
The company Huawei has no way to get the American political ban on cooperation to be revised, but there is a 'solution' to this problem, albeit with certain limitations. It can hardly be seen as a full-fledged replacement for Google Play, but it is still suitable as a temporary solution for Western markets. The company starts the global distribution of its HMS services (Huawei Mobile Services), which are already operating in China and are a complete analogue of services from Google. Moreover, Huawei immediately allocates a billion dollars to attract developers to HMS.
It is pertinent to clarify here that Google Play services are much more than just an app store from where users can download the programs they need. And even more than apps from Google itself, although for many Gmail, Maps, Photos and YouTube are critical components of a smartphone, without which the device cannot be considered complete. But at least they can be simply replaced. Whereas modern OS versions Android are simply built around the use of services. Third-party applications are based on the fact that the device already has maps from Google, a notification system from Google, an image gallery from Google, a security system from Google. As a result, for example, many applications will not have their own notification system working correctly if there are no Google Play services.
An alternative to the Google Play app store from Huawei is already working in China and is called Huawei App Gallery. There are already thousands of applications in this store that use HMS as a cloud, geolocation, game and notification service. Now this opportunity will be promoted outside of China. For which the company allocates $ 1 billion, attracting developers by the fact that they will get 85% of the revenue from sales of applications against 70% from Google or Apple.
But the problem is that for developers there is a much more difficult task than uploading the .apk file to the app store from Huawei. Above, it was said about how the application is tied to Google Play services, respectively, this whole part will have to be completely reworked so that the application can work with HMS. In Huawei they perfectly understand how much work will be required, and are ready to take other steps to simplify the life of developers. Head of Huawei Consumer Business Group Richard Yu said at the presentation that the company expects to use existing third-party app stores to install programs on Huawei Mate 30. But whichever way the company Huawei did not choose to attract developers, it will be difficult for her to compete with Google. And in the short term, it is completely impossible.
The fact that Huawei does not pay attention to the difficulties that arise is quite understandable, for the company there are simply no easy ways left. No matter how many billions of dollars are invested, they will not in any way affect the minimum time it takes for an ecosystem of applications from Huawei based on HMS services to come close to the volume that is required to successfully compete with similar systems Google and Apple.
As a result, it turns out that at the moment Huawei Mate 30 Pro, with all its positive qualities, cannot be recommended for purchase outside of China. No matter how good its characteristics are, it simply will not be able to use the usual set of applications. And for some applications, there won't even be a good replacement. At the same time, there are more than a dozen good Android smartphones on the market, on which all these applications are available and work without problems. The Mate 30 Pro will be the choice for a few geeks who are interested in the very opportunity to look at Android without Google services, and the question of having familiar applications is not at all.
For the rest, the Mate 30 Pro will be a smartphone to come to terms with. You will be looking for compromise solutions that would never be required with another Android smartphone. Despite the fact that the smartphone market is now so rich and diverse that no model has such a competitive advantage that would cover the problem of the lack of Google Play services. Moreover, the peculiarities of the perception of the system itself, which uses a certain analogue, turn out to be such that not only top-end Android smartphones, but also the newest generation iPhone will be in direct competitors. Moreover, the latter have a fully functional binding to Google applications.
Thus, the long-standing dispute around smartphones Huawei suddenly comes to a certain logical point. It began at a time when we had to admit that the hardware part of the smartphones of this Chinese company corresponds to the maximum possible on the market. What could not be said about the software component. It was only 'satisfactory', but its features could be tolerated because, despite all the shortcomings, smartphones Huawei became one of the best in terms of the sum of qualities. But the lack of Google Play services can hardly be called just a drawback that you can put up with and still get one of the best smartphones on the market. Anyway, outside of China.
There is no doubt that Huawei has some kind of plan in case the political squabbles between the PRC and the United States subside a little and she is again allowed to use Google services on her smartphones. Hardly anyone will be surprised if, following the lifting of restrictions, a software update immediately arrives over the air, bringing Google Play to Huawei Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro. But so far this has not happened, which means that in the case of these devices it is better to take a wait and see attitude. Maybe somewhere in the bowels of governments there is already some progress on the issue that will lead to changes in the future, but not today. Today, the Mate 30 Pro does not have Google Play services, which means there is no chance of success outside of China.