While there's been plenty of talk about the consequences of Google, ARM, Qualcomm, the SD Association, the Wi-Fi Alliance, carriers, and the USB-IF no longer working with Huawei, one company has been kept out of the discussion to date: the Bluetooth SIG.

For those of you who may not know, the Bluetooth SIG is a for-profit corporation headquartered in Washington state, and it holds all the keys to its trademark, closed-source wireless technology. Nobody can build a product with Bluetooth without the blessing of BT SIG, and it requires every product to use the technology to go through its certification program. The problem is that it will almost certainly not be able to do so for any Huawei products going forward.

A smartphone without Bluetooth may not sound like the worst thing in the world, but I'd argue this may be the last straw for Huawei's already-endangered smartphone business. A phone without Bluetooth can't connect to wireless headsets. It can't pair to in-vehicle infotainment systems. It can't be used with countless accessories, smart home devices, fitness trackers, or smartwatches. Think about that: Huawei wouldn't be able to build a phone that worked with its own smartwatch, or even the smartwatch itself. A smartphone without Bluetooth - even a very cheap one - isn't just bad, it's fundamentally uncompetitive in a way that would not make it worthwhile to build in the first place. It would be a product without a customer.

Huawei could attempt to reverse engineer the Bluetooth specification or use the technology without a license in China, where it would enjoy relative immunity from the Bluetooth SIG's legal attacks, but in almost any other nation in the world such a strategy would be unlikely to work - injunctions would be handed down and the phones barred from sale. Truly, the impact of this would utter devastation of Huawei's phone business in a way few other companies could match.

We've reached out to the Bluetooth SIG for comment, but given the holiday weekend here in the US, we're not expecting an immediate response. We'll also be reaching out to Huawei for comment on the Bluetooth certification status of its upcoming smartphones, including the Honor 20 Pro and the Mate X.