ZTE Corp. executives are evaluating software options for the company\u2019s smartphones after a U.S. technology ban threatened to cut off the operating system at the heart of its devices, a person with knowledge of the matter said.<\/p>\n
The Android operating system, designed by Google, is the core of ZTE smartphones, powering user-facing functions, apps, and other services. That means the software likely falls under Monday\u2019s U.S. government order denying China\u2019s ZTE access to American technology for seven years. Trading in ZTE shares was suspended in Hong Kong soon after the announcement.<\/p>\n
ZTE lawyers have been meeting with Google officials about the issue, according to the person. They asked not to be identified talking about private discussions. Google and ZTE declined to comment.<\/p>\n
The U.S. order stated that ZTE can\u2019t “participate in any way in any transaction involving any commodity, software or technology… exported or to be exported from the United States.” That includes licenses, the typical way software is used.<\/p>\n
Losing access to Android would be a major blow for ZTE because there are few alternatives. Microsoft Corp. and HP Inc. no longer offer smartphone operating systems, Apple\u2019s iOS is exclusive to its own devices, and ZTE doesn\u2019t have its own operating system. The only possible alternative is Samsung\u2019s Tizen, which hasn\u2019t taken off and only supports a few apps.<\/p>\n
For Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google, losing ZTE as an Android handset maker wouldn\u2019t be critical given the Chinese company\u2019s small market share. However, Google has been losing control of what some Android handset makers put on their devices. Samsung, the largest Android manufacturer, has introduced its own mobile services, such as a voice assistant, that compete with Google services. In response, Google has relied more heavily on Chinese manufacturers like ZTE, Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp.<\/p>\n
ZTE executives are evaluating software options for the company\u2019s smartphones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":219808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[397,895],"class_list":["post-256523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-android","tag-zte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256523"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256525,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256523\/revisions\/256525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}