The Huawei Ban



The Huawei ban has been making rounds in the news lately. Except for a relate article here and there, I was yet explore the implications of the ban in full details but, I figured it was about time as I currently use a Huawei phone.

After watching the youtube video, I gotta admit that most of my expectations were unfortunately met. Expectations that boiled down to - "this sucks!" For starters, all huawei products have been given 90 days after which they will be excluded form partaking in the rich, and diverse google ecosystem. A ban that also applies to the relationships between Huawei and all other American companies.

That means that once those 90 days are over the current Huawei hodlers won't be able to update their applications, and the new users won't be able to download them at all. So no more no watsapp, no facebook, etc... long story short, bye bye Google services.

Google services being the most popular in the phone World this could spell frustration for the customers, and trouble for the company. Though with the billions $$ they hold they could easily come up with a competitive software, specially if they're able to leverage the huge Chinese population.

Still, as huge as the chinese community is, and however much Huawei can afford to spend on a new software, I still find it hard to believe that it would be enough. Specially when you consider how apps like watsapp are already so ingrained in our daily hourly lives, and how people generally don't like change. Not to mention that brand is everything and right now Google is king.

Steem are Ok?



The implementation of this ban will probably also mean that some steem dapps will be affected albeit on a small scale, since most also rely on Google services to keep phone users engaged. They could of course negotiate to enter their products in the surely incoming huawei software, or they could allow users to download the dapps straight from their main websites. In my opinion seasoned steemians won't mind but I think the newly onboarded steemians might think twice before doing so. Again, Bran is king, and we all know how much mainstream media has been making the public give huawei the side eye.

Conclusion:



I wish the US and China would ease up a bit with their trade war or possibly even end it, though I don't see the latter scenario playing out anytime soon. Until then, I'm sure more and more industries(Not necessarily tech related.) will and are already are getting negatively affected. Consumers like us will also continue getting less and less choices as proper competition is massively reduced, which might lead to western firms monopolizing the smartphone industry. But then again that might have been the plan all along.

How about you though? What are your thoughts on the huawei ban and the trade war in general. Is this about stopping the big bad in their tracks to World dominion, or sabotaging competitiveness in the 5G race? Could it just be pettiness or is it something else entirely? Love to hear thoughts.

You can check out this youtube video for a more in depth dive.