Huawei is Going Ahead with its Flagship Phone Launch

In roughly a couple of weeks, Huawei will be launching the Mate 30 flagship smartphone in Munich, Germany says a source familiar with the situation to CNBC.

The company is expected to launch the phone on September 19th, whether it has Google services or not, according to the source.

If Huawei cannot get access to Google’s licensed apps then it will launch the phone with an open-source version of the Android operating system instead. The system will not have Google apps pre-installed on the smartphone but users could of course download them after.

The Mate 30 will have Huawei’s Kirin 990 processor and will be launched in China as well as international markets. It will be able to connect to next-generation mobile networks known as 5G which promise super-fast data speeds.

Huawei is on a U.S. blacklist known as the Entity List that does not allow American firms from doing business with it.

The Chinese company has received a 90-day reprieve under which U.S. firms can apply for special licenses to sell to Huawei. Google is subject to these restrictions.

A Google spokesman spoke to Reuters last week and said that the Mate 30 cannot be sold with licensed Google apps and services due to the U.S. blacklist.

The spokesman explained that the temporary reprieve does not apply to new products such as the upcoming smartphone.

“We won’t launch the Harmony system into the smartphone in such a short time as it will damage the relationship and trust between Huawei and Google since we have been working with Google for many years,” the source said to CNBC.

“We are still expecting some miracle to happen,” the source said.

“For smartphone operating systems, the open Android operating system and the ecosystem around it are still our first choice. Please stay tuned for our new products,” a Huawei spokesperson commented.