Newsletter
If new reports are to be believed, Honor is working on developing a new line of smartphones. Interestingly, these Honor devices may ship with Google services as standard.
Thanks to the tension between the US government and Huawei, both Huawei and its former subsidiary Honor were unable to introduce a smartphone with Google services since 2019.
Back in 2020, Honor was sold by Huawei to curb the suffering in the trade war between the US and China. Going forward, Honor will take a different route than Huawei and will introduce phones with Google services.
This means that we may soon see new Honor devices with Google Apps pre-installed, which were missing from the devices since the trade war between the US and Huawei started.
Moreover, according to Kommersant, a reputable Russian newspaper, Honor plans to bring this new line of smartphones with Google services by spring this year.
However, existing Honor smartphones will continue on HMS (Huawei Mobile Services). As per sources, current Honor smartphones will have access to HMS and App Gallery. But soon Honor will switch over to Google services permanently.
Honor switching to Google services will hamper Huawei’s alternative app ecosystem
Though this move will help Honor come back in markets where it is losing popularity, Huawei’s alternate ecosystem, i.e. HarmonyOS, will be hampered.
Apparently, Huawei itself is seeing a decline in popularity outside of China. Besides, no other brands have expressed interest in supporting Huawei Mobile Services.
And soon Honor will also go back to GMS, which hints that Huawei’s alternative ecosystem may not take off as expected.
Honor has already suffered huge losses because of its non-GMS phones in markets like Europe and Russia. As per Kommersant, Honor was the second-biggest smartphone company for 2020, only after Samsung.
But finally, Honor may have decided that they are done with the losses. The next smartphone from Honor is expected to be the Honor V40 series.
Since these devices were manufactured when Honor was a part of Huawei, they will not ship with GMS. In fact, the V40 series will naturally come with Magic UI.
Our assumption is that we may see Google services-powered Honor phones only after the Honor X11 and Honor 40 phones. It is also a possibility that Honor may completely revamp and introduce a new lineup of smartphones to mark a new beginning.
There is no official comment from either Honor or Google on this partnership. So, we may have to go with the flow in order to see further developments in this matter.