Huawei Partners With TomTom To Replace Google Maps On Its Smartphones

21/01/2020

Donald Trump's administration placed sanctions on Huawei, placing it on a trade blacklist called an “entity list” in May 2019, designating it a national security risk. The U.S. claims Huawei acts as a conduit for Chinese government espionage, an allegation the company denies.

The Chinese phone maker Huawei is one of the most influential in the industry. But with its ties to American tech companies like Google are severed, the company is looking ahead for solutions.

One of which, is to replace Google Maps, the popular app almost synonymous with navigation on Android phones.

To do this, Huawei signed a deal with Dutch digital mapping company TomTom to put maps on its phones.

TomTom as a non-America company, isn't affected by Trump's ban.

“We can confirm that developers can now use TomTom Maps APIs, Map content and traffic services via Huawei’s developer portal,” said a TomTom spokesperson.

While TomTom has its own brand on both iOS and Android, the deal allows Huawei to build its own apps with TomTom’s maps, traffic information, and navigation tools.

The two companies finalized a deal this week, according to Reuters, letting Huawei use that information to build its own proprietary apps.

TomTom Huawei

Google is probably the most influential company in the tech sphere. With Huawei losing access to Google's services, it is forced Huawei to look for quick and long-term solutions to sustain its smartphone business.

Losing access to Google Play on Android, for example, is already a huge hit.

Anyone with an Huawei Android phone can download TomTom's app. But without Google Play, part of the Google Mobile Service won't be available on newer Huawei phones that are restricted to the basic, open-source Android OS. The deal between Huawei and TomTom matters because with it, Huawei can deploy its own answers to Google Maps.

After all, when a customer buys a phone, they expect it to have navigation app already on board.

Previous reports have said Huawei is building a full-fledged mapping system known as “Map Kit.” That software would be meant for app developers and could use data from Russian tech giant Yandex and Huawei. But with the deal with TomTom, Huawei is having a backup plan besides Map Kit.

At this time, Huawei still prefers using Android OS. While it has its own multi-device operating system it calls HarmonyOS, which resembles Android.

But of course, HarmonyOS doesn't have Gmail app, or YouTube or Google Maps, which is why Huawei needs to build its own alternatives.

By partnering with TomTom, Huawei is taking more and more steps to get ready for its Google-less future.

TomTom was once the maker of all the best GPS devices, back in the days where smartphones weren't equipped with built-in GPS. By offering a combination of advanced features, the ease-of-use, smart navigation tools and the comprehensive mapping it, TomTom was popular back then.

Since smartphone manufacturers started using GPS chips inside their devices, the need of users to use a standalone GPS device massively reduced. TomTom's market share shrank incredibly fast, forcing the company to shift its business to become a supplier of devices to businesses and software smarts and apps to phone makers.

Most notably, Apple devised its own alternative to Google Maps by partnering with TomTom. it was TomTom that provided part of the mapping and other elements to make Apple Maps work.

However, Apple Maps was famously bad when it was young launched, prompting an apology from CEO Tim Cook.