Honor alongside Huawei in 2019 was banned from doing business with Google. Due to which neither of their smartphones could ship with Google Mobile Services (GMS). Since then, the company has separated from Huawei and in a statement to GSMArena has confirmed that “global Honor smartphones and tablets will be able to run Google’s Mobile Services going forward.”
The company has stated that it is currently undergoing Google’s Play Protect security review and compatibility testing to ensure GMS apps are ready to run on Honor devices. It has not provided a solid timeline for when it will start releasing phones globally with GMS support.
The report states that that all compatible devices will get GMS. However, it has not confirmed if the older devices already on the market will get GMS support or not.
To recall, Huawei back in 2020 sold off its secondary smartphone brand, Honor to Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology Co. Ltd. As a part of the sale, Honor is now an independent brand and would technically not be affected by the US restrictions, which are limiting Huawei’s telecom consumer and commercial businesses.
GMS are the additional services including the Google Play Store, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube and Google Drive, which Google provides to OEMs on top of its open-source Android operating system.
This news comes at a good time as the company just launched its Honor 50 series smartphones in China, which could eventually ship with GMS when they are eventually announced for the global market.
Also keep in mind, this does not mean that Huawei phones will also be able to ship with GMS. The company is still on the US entity list and cannot conduct business with US-based companies with a few exceptions like Qualcomm.
