The move marks a sudden and dramatic turnabout for the U.S. tech conglomerate. On Sunday, Google said it would cut ties with Huawei in order to comply with Washington’s decision to put China’s telecom giant on the so-called Entity List.
However, shortly thereafter, the U.S. Commerce Department announced it had granted a 90-day license for mobile phone companies and internet broadband providers to work with Huawei to keep existing networks online and protect users from security risks.
The exemption allows Google to send software updates to Huawei phones which use its Android operating system through to August 19.
“Keeping phones up to date and secure is in everyone’s best interests and this temporary license allows us to continue to provide software updates and security patches to existing models for the next 90 days,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC in an email on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the founder of Huawei expressed confidence Washington’s curbs on sales to the Chinese tech giant will have little impact and said Tuesday it is discussing “emergency relief” from Google for possible loss of services for its smartphone business.
Huawei Technologies Ltd., the biggest maker of network gear for phone carriers, has “supply backups” if it loses access to American components, Ren Zhengfei told Chinese reporters.
(Excerpts from the Time.com and cnbc.com)