Huawei granted temporary license to continue providing Android updates through August

Ben Schoon | May 20 2019 - 2:42 pm PT

This past weekend saw Huawei’s worst fear come true – its Android license was revoked at US Government order. Today, though, Huawei has reportedly been granted a temporary license to continue pushing Android updates through mid-August.

Reported by Reuters this afternoon, the US Commerce Department has granted Huawei a temporary license to continue some activities which count on US companies. The general license gives the company the ability to maintain its current networks as well as providing software updates to Android devices.

In the US, this license will assist customers in regions such as Wyoming and Oregon which run on equipment purchased from Huawei.

More importantly, it should enable Huawei to push out updates it’s been holding without concern that they could break major functionality such as the Google Play Store on devices around the world.

However, this temporary license does expire on August 19th. If an agreement isn’t settled on by that point, Huawei will be stuck once again. For the time being, this change essentially delays the loss of Google’s help until that date.

The Verge also notes that the license only grants Huawei what it needs “to provide service and support, including software updates or patches, to existing Huawei handsets that were available to the public on or before May 16, 2019”

The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday created a temporary general license restoring Huawei’s ability to maintain existing networks and provide software updates to existing Huawei handsets.

The license, which was posted for public inspection, scales back the restrictions imposed by the U.S. government last week on Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s buying U.S. goods in order to help existing customers. The temporary license lasts until Aug. 19.

Notably, August 19th is around the general time Google will publicly release Android Q. Assuming an extension or solution isn’t granted on this blacklisting by that point, it seems unlikely that Huawei would be able to push that newer version of Google’s OS to customers without breaking Google services.

Huawei has yet to comment on the temporary license.