The Chinese tech company will launch its latest smartphone, the Mate 30, in Munich on Thursday. It is Huawei's first smartphone series to hit the market since being put on a trade blacklist by the United States back in May, cutting off its new products from access to Google apps and services.
The Mate 30 phones will come with Google's open source Android operating system, but won't have access to the Google Play Store or apps like YouTube, Gmail and Google Maps. Third party apps like ride-hailing platforms and food delivery services that rely on Google Maps would also no longer function without access to Google services.
Smartphones and other consumer products made up nearly half of Huawei's revenue last year. But without access to popular apps, those phones become a lot less attractive to international customers. Earlier this year, Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei said the company's global smartphone sales fell by 40% in the month after the US ban went into effect.
Europe in particular was a market where Huawei had been successfully selling high-end phones, such as the Mate and P series. The company shipped 26.3 million smartphones in Western Europe in 2018, up more than 60% from the previous year, according to market research firm IHS Markit.
Huawei unveiled its own operating system, called Harmony OS, last month. But the company said it is not using Harmony in smartphones for now, only in smart TVs and other connected devices.
Huawei's Mate 30 series is expected to come with a better camera system and faster hardware under the hood. Huawei said last month that the new phone will come with its new Kirin 990 chipset, the company's homegrown answer to Apple's (AAPL) A13 Bionic chipset in the iPhone 11.
Prices for the new Mate 30 phones have not been announced yet. The previous Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro went on sale in Europe at €799 ($882) and €1,049 ($1,158) respectively.
