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Update: Huawei Issued Waiver by U.S. to Continue Software Updates & Hardware Maintenance

 by Andrei Frumusanu on May 20, 2019 9:00 PM EST
114 Comments | Add A Comment
114 Comments

Update 05/20, 9pm: Following last week's ban and Google's suspension of business operations with Huawei, the U.S. Commerce Department has issued a new waiver for the company to continue purchasing limited goods from U.S. companies for maintenance purposes. Under the 90 day waiver, Huawei will be allowed to purchase hardware and software services to maintain current infrastructure as well as provide software updates for existing Huawei Android devices. As noted by Reuters, however, Huawei is still banned from buying parts and equipment for manufacturing new devices – meaning that as things currently stand, the company can only keep building affected products until their stockpiles run out.

While the waiver itself is initially only for 90 days, it can be extended as necessary by the U.S. Government.

Update 05/20: Huawei this morning has responded to reports and the U.S. Commerce Department’s ban, issuing the following statement:

Huawei has made substantial contributions to the development and growth of Android around the world. As one of Android’s key global partners, we have worked closely with their open-source platform to develop an ecosystem that has benefitted both users and the industry.

Huawei will continue to provide security updates and after-sales services to all existing Huawei and Honor smartphone and tablet products, covering those that have been sold and that are still in stock globally.

We will continue to build a safe and sustainable software ecosystem, in order to provide the best experience for all users globally.

This answers one of the most important questions for the moment – what happens to support for current devices – however it remains to be seen what this means for new Huawei smartphones, particularly the Honor 20, which is launching tomorrow.

Original: According to a recent report by Reuters, sources claim that Google is to suspend some business operations with Huawei due to the U.S. Commerce Department’s blacklisting of the company earlier in the week on Thursday.

Huawei is said to lose access to non-open source software and services provided by Google, which in layman terms means essentially all Google services besides baseline Android. Losing access to the Play Store would be a major blow to Huawei’s mobile operations besides the Chinese market where Google doesn’t operate any services.

Huawei will continue to have access to the version of the Android operating system available through the open source license that is freely open to anyone who wishes to use it.

But Google will stop providing any technical support and collaboration for Android and Google services to Huawei going forward, the source said.

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Source: Reuters

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  • s.yu - Tuesday, May 21, 2019 - link

    "A normal person would expect security flaws or loopholes intentionally added by the company to their products if it is called a security threat."
    In Vodafone's case (go read it) they found and reported a vulnerability to Huawei, Huawei promptly told them it's been fixed, then they tested it again and found that it was still open with a little cover-up, and finally Huawei refused to fix it stating it would affect the "quality" of the firmware. Tell me that's not intentional.
    Ironically Vodafone still intends to use Huawei because they're cheap, a prime example of the west surrendering autonomy to China from financial issues.

  • damianrobertjones - Monday, May 20, 2019 - link

    What is it with the latest 'trend' of zero capitals?

  • Gasaraki88 - Monday, May 20, 2019 - link

    Why don't you ask the other countries in Europe?

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30...
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/05/16/...

  • ZolaIII - Monday, May 20, 2019 - link

    Well Germany did found back doors but not in Huawei network equipment but Cisco's. Qualcomm property modem RTOS is closed source with exploits and backdoor's, same can be said for Intels security co processors. Let's ban all of them then.

  • Notmyusualid - Tuesday, May 21, 2019 - link

    @ Zolall - finally, you come out with something partly true. Cisco was found to have backdoors installed, but I believe it was the Russians, not the Germans that discovered them.

    I don't know if this was specific to a certain IOS release for Russia, as its unlikely to be found in home-nets thats for sure. But Cisco stopped their games, and Huawei etc will never, given the communist gov they have.

  • croc - Tuesday, May 21, 2019 - link

    "The Truth? You can't HANDLE the truth!"

    The TRUTH is that the US government is finally trying to lock the doors after all the carrier pigeons have already flown the coop.... Or, to put it in simple terms, Greed. US near-sighted stockholders want money. Cheapest way for US firms to deliver to the stockholders is to go with the cheapest qualified labor they can find. China. Now, you don't need a crystal ball to look backwards, do you? By giving the Chinese access to the latest technology, are you surprisedthat they use that technology and actually IMPROVE it? Or, that they use it for themselves and actually COMPETE? Do you think that the USA is actually above this kind of behavior? Remember Rubbermaid? The Waltons insisted that they get their products made in China so that Walmart could get better discounts on their products. So, to paraphrase Will Shakspere, the US has been hoist on its own petard called GREED.

    The TRUTH? You, sir, can't HANDLE the truth.

  • wolrah - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link

    So...what does this mean for owners of existing Huawei Android devices? I have their first WearOS watch and a friend of mine has a Nexus 6P. Are we SOL on future updates beyond the basic AOSP core?

  • SirPerro - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link

    Well both devices won't get updates anyway.

    But recent phones... That's gonna be interesting. Theoretically Huawei can patch the kernel vulnerabilities just fine, and even upgrade the android version while keeping "what's there already" WRT Google play. But wouldn't bet my money on that.

  • wolrah - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link

    @SirPerro Neither device receives new major revisions of Android, but both are still receiving patches and sometimes even new features, or at least were until now.

    While mine doesn't have it yet, there are HWatch1s that have received the new "Tiles" update to WearOS.

  • leexgx - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link

    this only affects New uncertified phones after this ban (currant phones are unaffected) not sure how it would prevent , this could be a big problem for the Mate 30 pro later on this year or they could just load google play still it just be uncertified version
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