Huawei forced to launch Mate 30 phone without Google apps

New Android smartphone falls foul of trade war and Trump's blacklisting of Chinese firm

The launch of Huawei's latest smartphone, the Mate 30, has been hampered by the ongoing trade war between China and the US, which has resulted in Google pulling its apps and services from the company's new devices.

Announced in Munich on Thursday, the high-end Mate 30 series, which features Huawei's latest class-leading camera and 5G technology, runs Android 10 but not the Google version. It lacks Google's apps, such as Gmail and Chrome, Google's Play Store and the associated Google Play Services, which increasingly form the backend of all Android apps developed for a western audience. Instead Huawei is pushing its own "fully open" mobile services platform for Android.