As the US versus China trade war escalates, Chinese tech giant Huawei is feeling the pain of the US government trade sanctions on its smartphone business.

Reports today suggest that uncertainty of handset available and the removal of the vitally important Google Suite of applications from its new devices has affected device shipments by between 40-60%

Popular high-end phones such as the P30 Pro and the fanatically spec’d and priced P20 Lite are no longer a viable option for business or consumers with the uncertainty of security concerns and application availability. Huawei has said that it knew of the issue and has been developing it’s own applications to plug the gap of the missing google services, and whilst this maybe a solution in the Asian market, it won’t cut the muster with western customers.

Looking beyond Huawei, choice in the Android Ecosystem is becoming more limited. HTC and Sony, once rivals to Samsung’s premium offerings are all but disappeared. Rebadged Nokia’s are praised for their mid-market price, however lack the performance and confidence of consumers to take on Samsung and Apple as a premium product.

Samsung is also struggling. Behind the glamour of successful launches of the last twelve months, customers still remember the exploding Galaxy Note battery issue, and worse still, the brand took a huge hit when the Galaxy Fold, what would have been the first folding smartphone to enter the market spectacularly failed in reviewers hands.

With the Android OEM ecosystem struggling, it’s more important than ever that Google scores with the next release of the Pixel Smartphone. The last three generations have been close, it feels this time Google must get it right. If not, soon the only decent high-end phone your be able to buy will be an Apple iPhone!