Huawei Mate 30 range has best-in-class processor, battery management, and pro-grade camera. However, hardware upgrades will not count for much without Google apps or services.

Popular apps like YouTube, Gmail, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Play Store and Chrome are all part of Google Mobile Services (GMS), and Huawei will find it very hard to sell devices without them in the Western world, where they are ubiquitous and indispensable.

An announcement that Huawei has a US$1 billion incentive program for app developers working on Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) open platform, sounded like nothing more but a desperate cry for help from the company to try to compensate for the loss of Google’s services.

In China, of course, Google has no significance, so Huawei shipments in its homeland are unlikely to be affected by a lack of GMS services. But Huawei already has a huge marketshare in China, so it is debatable whether the company will be able to improve significantly on that in an already slowing smartphone market.

For detailed analysis and forecast by model, clients of our Wireless Smartphone Strategies (WSS) can read here: https://tinyurl.com/y5aep582