Zuckerberg has decreed that new Huawei phones won’t have Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp pre-installed. This would be trivial if users could download them manually, but the company’s future products will reportedly be banned from accessing Google’s Play store. Alternatives exist, but this remains another problem Huawei will have to contend with.
Smartphone vendors often enter business deals to pre-install popular apps such as Facebook. Apps including Twitter and Booking.com also come pre-installed on Huawei phones in many markets. Twitter Inc declined to comment and Booking Holdings did not respond to a request. The move by Facebook dampens the sales outlook for Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, whose smartphone business became its biggest revenue generator last year, powered by strong growth in Europe and Asia.