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African Consumers Still Want Huawei Smartphones Even Without Google’s Services

by Eric Olander
South African telecom operator Telkom's best-selling high-end smartphone brands in 2021.

When Huawei was added to the U.S. entities list in August 2020 that blocked the Chinese telecom giant from using American technology on its smartphones, most notably Google’s Android operating system, many commentators wrote obituaries for the company’s once-dominant handset business.

Few thought that in today’s bifurcated Apple OS <> Android OS world, a third mobile operating system would be able to survive.

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