Huawei could offer ProtonMail as alternative to Google’s Gmail

Huawei’s partnership with ProtonMail could bring the email service preloaded on future Huawei phones.

Visitors walk past the booth of Huawei promoting its P30 Pro smartphone at the international electronics and innovation fair IFA in Berlin on September 6, 2019. - Exhibitors from more than 100 countries will be presenting their latest products during the fair running from September 6 to 11, 2019. (AFP)

ProtonMail is in talks with Huawei Technologies Co. about including its encrypted email service in future mobile devices, part of the Chinese phone maker's plan to develop an alternative to Alphabet Inc.'s Google ecosystem.

Huawei may lose access to Google's programs after the U.S. added it to a trade blacklist in May, meaning American businesses need a special license to do business with the Chinese company. The restrictions also affect updates for the Google Android operating system that powers all its smartphones abroad, and without which Huawei can't offer critical apps like Gmail. As a result, Huawei has been racing to build out its own mobile operating system, HarmonyOS, and enlisting developers to offer services on its app store.

"What they see from us is having an alternative to Google in case they can't offer Google anymore," Yen said in an interview.

Read more about the potential impact of the blacklist here.

Representatives for Huawei and Google didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Swiss Neutrality

Despite the company's efforts to develop its own solutions, Huawei's overseas smartphone sales could be slashed in half in the next 12 months if phone owners can't use Google Maps or other Google services, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Charles Shum said in a note this week.

Yen said that while his company wants to maintain strict neutrality on any political issues, the deciding factor in joining forces with Huawei would be whether it could guarantee the security and privacy of its users.

The discussions with Huawei fit into a wider trend among Chinese providers that are starting to look for alternatives to American tech, amid the increasing U.S. trade tensions with China, he said.

"It's a business opportunity for Europe in general to provide a viable alternative to American tech and to provide for real competition," Yen said.

Geneva-based ProtonMail offers its 17 million global users an end-to-end encrypted email service. It also stores data at its own data centers, including one located in a heavily guarded bunker under 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) of granite rock, according to its website. The company launched in 2014 while the founders were still researchers at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.