Huawei announced the new MateBook D series of notebooks alongside the new MatePad Pro and Sound X speakers earlier today in China. The MateBook D came with Windows 10 pre-installed, which might have surprised a lot of readers. So it turns out that the U.S. commerce department has recently approved some licenses to trade with Huawei, including the one requested by Microsoft.
The Redmond giant revealed in a statement to Bloomberg a couple of days back that it has been granted a license to “export mass-market software” to Huawei. While the company didn’t elaborate on the term ‘mass-market’, we now know that it includes Microsoft’s Windows 10 platform.
Prior to this, Huawei pre-installed Deepin Linux on its MateBook models as a replacement to Windows 10. The telecommunications giant wasn’t allowed to use Windows 10 on its MateBook models ever since it was added to the U.S. government’s Entity List. So it was selling cheaper versions of its MateBook laptops running Deepin Linux onboard. Despite the advantages of having a Linux setup, Windows as a platform doesn’t have viable replacements. So getting the supply for Windows 10 back on its notebook models should come as a huge reprieve for the company.
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The U.S. commerce department reportedly got around 290 requests for a license to trade with Huawei last week. Unfortunately, only a handful of these requests are expected to be approved. We have no word on which other companies have been granted licenses apart from Microsoft.
To recall, Microsoft’s President Brad Smith, was vocal about how the U.S. ban on Huawei was both unfair and un-American. Microsoft had reportedly approached the Trump administration to talk about the ban but would often get vague replies like, “Well, if you knew what we knew, you would agree with us”.
Microsoft’s license to trade with Huawei is a step forward. However, the company’s struggle is far from over. There are still companies like Google who are barred from selling its software to the Chinese giant. And Google is very important for Huawei, who is currently the world’s second-largest smartphone manufacturer. In fact, it could have even surpassed Samsung by this year-end to become world number one. But without Google services onboard, Huawei smartphones are essentially Dead on Arrival (DOA) in the international markets.
So it’s extremely important for Huawei to get access to Google services as soon as possible. Unfortunately, given the current situation, we don’t know if that’ll happen anytime in the near future.
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