Skip to main content

US ban crushes Huawei's Google Assistant smart speaker dreams

Huawei and Google were reportedly just months away from releasing a Google Assistant smart speaker before the the US ban thwarted the two companies' plans. 

According to a report by The Information, Huawei and Google planned to launch the new smart speaker at IFA 2019 in Berlin this September. However, US government sanctions, which restricted Huawei's access to US tech suppliers ensured that the project was killed in May this year. 

An anonymous Huawei employee told The Information that they had "worked on this project with Google for a year and made a lot of progress", and that "everything suddenly stopped".

While the sources cited in the report didn't offer any details about the smart speaker itself, it's possible that it would have been similar to the Huawei AI Cube, the company's 4G router-come-smart-speaker.  

Global fallout

The fact that Huawei was working on a smart speaker with Google isn't exactly unexpected; Huawei and Honor phones run the Google-developed Android OS, after all, and the two companies have worked together for a number of years.

However, the US Huawei ban has had far-reaching consequences, which means Google and Huawei's relationship is incredibly uncertain.

When the Trump administration placed the Chinese brand on the 'entity list' earlier this year, it limited the business US companies could do with it – including Google.

In response, Google suspended Huawei's future access to Android Play Store and security updates, leading to questions about the viability of future Huawei and Honor phones.

Both Google and Huawei have promised that they will support phones that are currently on the market, but we don't know how long these models will receive Android updates or have access to the Google Play Store.

Recently there has been a slight reprieve for the company, with President Trump suggesting the Huawei ban could soon be over at the G20 summit in Japan – and by mid-July, some US companies were permitted to trade with Huawei. 

For now, Google is still working with Huawei on a temporary basis – but with so much uncertainty, we may never see that fabled Huawei/Google smart speaker.



from TechRadar - All the latest technology news https://ift.tt/2Zkw05v
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The future of Magic Leap's promising AR efforts dim after layoffs

The Magic Leap Two is now further away than ever, unfortunately. Today in a blog post the augmented reality pioneer announced major layoffs and has decided to cut up to half of its workforce, according to some reports. The original Magic Leap One was supposed to be one of the first mainstream augmented reality headsets when it launched in 2018, but a high price point and lack of interest from developers left the headset high and dry after launch. According to the blog post, Magic Leap says it will be focusing its efforts on enterprise solutions (a statement HTC has made recently as well) and shift its focus away from consumer technology… at least for the time being.  The company has been open about creating a second headset that would offer improved specs for some time, but how that work will now have to go forward without half of the team , according to some estimates, remains to be seen. Is the window closing on augmented reality?  Although it’s just one company, Magic...
Post a Comment
Read more

Airship acquires SMS commerce company ReplyBuy

Airship is announcing that it has acquired mobile commerce startup ReplyBuy . The startup (which was a finalist at TechCrunch’s 1st and Future competition in 2016) works with customers like entertainment venues and professional and college sports teams to send messages and sell tickets to fans via SMS. It raised $4 million in funding from Sand Hill Angels, Kosinski Ventures, SEAG Ventures, Enspire Capital, MRTNZ Ventures and others, according to Crunchbase . Airship, meanwhile, has been expanding its platform beyond push notifications to cover customer communication across SMS, email, mobile wallets and more. But CEO Brett Caine said this is the first time the company is moving into commerce. While sports and concerts tickets might not be a booming market right now, Caine suggested that the company is actually seeing increased purchasing activity “in and around the Airship platform” as businesses try to drive more in-app purchases. He also suggested that both the COVID-19 pandem...
Post a Comment
Read more