Chinese technology company Huawei will launch on Thursday its latest smartphone, the Mate 30 with no access to Google apps and services.
The Mate 30 will be the first smartphone series to be introduced by Huawei after it got blacklisted by the US in May.
The Mate 30 will run on Google's Android operating system but will not have access to the Google Play Store or apps such as YouTube, Gmail and Google Maps. This would also mean that Google Maps-reliant apps like ride-hailing platforms and food delivery services would not work on the device.
Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei announced earlier this year that the company's global sales for smartphones have fallen by 40% in the month following the US ban. The lack of access to popular apps is expected to impact the Huawei smartphone's appeal to international customers.
Thomas Husson, an analyst with research firm Forrester, pointed out that while the Mate 30 "will help Huawei compete in China — still the largest smartphone market in the world — the firm will struggle outside of China ... due to the lack of the Google Play Store." He added that this will make the company's European business particularly vulnerable.
According to market research firm IHS Markit, Huawei has increased its shipments to Western Europe by over 60% to 26.3 million smartphones in 2018.
Huawei has also previously introduced its own operating system called Harmony OS but will use it only in smart TVs and other connected devices and not in smartphones in the meantime.
At an international trade show earlier this month, Richard Yu, the head of Huawei's consumer business group, said that it would be "quite easy" for Mate 30 users to download Google apps on their own given the open-source nature of Android, which enables "a lot of possibilities."Â He did not further discuss what he said.
