As many of you know, Google services are blocked in China. What does this mean? Well, the Android-based devices by Chinese OEMs which are being sold in China simply don’t come with Google services pre-installed. Some OEMs install them when they send devices outside of China, like Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, etc. You’ll notice that I’ve mentioned a couple of international companies who happen to be based in China. All of these OEMs sell their devices all over the world, not only in that Asian country. There are a number of well-known OEMs (at least in tech circles) who do sell their smartphones in China only, or have been doing so until recently, read on.
Xiaomi is probably the best example, this company is currently the number one smartphone manufacturer in that Asian country, and has, until recently, sold their smartphones only in China. Xiaomi has expanded to Brazil a couple of weeks ago, but that’s it. Meizu is yet another great example, this company is also based in China, and unlike Xiaomi, they still sell their smartphones only in Asia. Unfortunately for users outside of Asia, that also means that Google Services don’t come pre-installed on such devices.
You might wonder why is this such a problem. Well, first of all, it makes it difficult to import a device because you have to sideload Google apps, which is not a problem on some devices, but on others, it’s a real nightmare. On some devices you can simply sideload them, in case you don’t know the procedure, you can Google it in no time, but for some devices it’s almost impossible. This also influences consumers in China, of course. Tech savvy people can find a way to use Google Services in China, but people really shouldn’t go through all that just so that they could access Google Play Store and download apps, or simply use Google Drive to store their files.
Google is not the only company that is blocked in China, there are around 1,700 other websites / companies that are blocked as well, including Dropbox, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, etc. That being said, a recent report has suggested that Huawei and Google are working together in order to convince the Chinese government to unblock Google’s Services in that country. Nothing has been confirmed just yet, but it would be great if the two companies would manage to do it somehow. That would make things a whole lot easier not only for OEMs, but for consumers as well.
China is the biggest smartphone market in the world, let’s hope that the Chinese government will allow Android to be Android in its true sense in the near future, even though we really doubt that will happen. It’s nice to hear that Huawei and Google might be working on it, even though that it just a rumor, nothing else. Let us know what you think regarding all this, we’d love to hear some opinions, of course. Do you think the Chinese government would even consider unblocking Google, and a ton of other websites as well?