Huawei Starts Beta-testing HMS with GMS Off Limits

On December 24, Charles Peng, head of Huawei ’s Indian Consumer Business, revealed to the Indian Economic Times that Huawei is launching HMS (Huawei Mobile Services) to fend off the negative effects of Google pulling the plug on GMS (Google Mobile Services) for Huawei phones. The HMS, began beta-testing in China on December 23.

In May 2019, Google reacted to the US government placing Huawei on the “Entity List” by banning the use of GMS on Huawei phones. Thus, the company’s handsets were left without access to Google Mail, Youtube, Google Pay, Google Cloud, and Google Navigation Services.

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Huawei has admitted the importance of GMS to its products. Joy Tan, Huawei ’s vice president of US public affairs, said in an interview with the Financial Times: “Because the Android platform is open source, we can continue to use it, but we cannot use these Google services. Huawei Mate 30 series, became the first Huawei flagship phone with GMS to be disabled. Currently, there are many Android mobile phone users in Europe and Southeast Asia and other places. At the same time, these regions are also some of Huawei ’s best-selling. The lack of Google GMS on Huawei Mate 30 series will undoubtedly have a bad impact on the sales of Huawei mobile phones. For most overseas users, they have already become accustomed to those Google applications. In other words, in the short-term perspective, the GMS services will be irreplaceable.”

However, Charles Peng told the Indian Economic Times that the HMS, Huawei’s answer to GMS was already underway, noting that the company was working on how to work with developers to provide a good customer experience. He also mentioned that Huawei’s system will be significantly different from Google’s.

Huawei’s HMS was officially launched for public beta tests in China on December 23.