But it’s probably safe to say that with their new offerings lacking GMS and 5G, Huawei devices are a bit of a hard sell. Which is perhaps why that they’re reportedly looking at licensing out their smartphone designs to third parties. According to a report from Bloomberg, Huawei may be on the verge of licensing their designs to a unit of the China Postal and Telecommunications Appliances Corporation .
The PTAC unit in question appears to be Xnova, which is already selling Huawei devices in China. A quick check of its website shows multiple Huawei smartphones like the Mate 40 Pro and Nova 8 on sale in its store. The Bloomberg report claims that the PTAC-Huawei partnership will see Xnova launch their own brand of smartphones, with designs licensed from Huawei.
This move by Huawei is likely not going to bring up profits nor will it be their new main focus, but it should be able to keep Huawei afloat in such tough times. Huawei’s designs have already been getting tweaked to use Qualcomm and MediaTek silicon instead of their own HiSilicon chips, seeing as they still can’t use the services of TSMC.
In the meantime, the current White House administration doesn’t look like yielding anytime soon, and Huawei seems set on continuing to release new devices without 5G and GMS. Of course, you can also get yourself a Honor device, which still looks as though they’ve maintained their Huawei-inspired roots. The Honor 50 for instance looks almost identical to the Huawei Nova 9, while the upcoming Honor 50 Lite also seems inspired by the Huawei Nova 8i.