The arrival of the Pixel changed Google’s phone business model a great deal. The Pixel phones are said to be the first real Google phones to make it out into the wild and unlike the Nexus family, the new handsets don’t feature the maker’s branding anymore. Also Google is handling all the sales, without involvement form its OEM partner.
In reality, HTC is the unnamed partner behind the Pixel phones, but the Taiwanese device maker wasn’t the Google first choice. The search giant established a partnership with Huawei in 2015 to make the Nexus 6P and apparently Google wanted to keep working with the Chinese manufacturer. But Huawei backed out of the deal and we were left wondering why.
Now a report coming from German website WinFuture sheds some light on the matter. Huawei executive Colin Giles talked about the reason behind declining to work with Google for the Pixel. Apparently the Chinese tech giant didn’t like the idea of being left out of all Pixel promotional and branding endeavors. Basically it didn’t want to be silent partner like HTC agreed to be.
Huawei had high expectations when it started working with Google last year. For starters, the search giant promised the Nexus 6P will be landing with all major carriers including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.
A massive Nexus 6P marketing campaign was also expected to be unleashed. However, all these promises never materialized with the Nexus 6P being confined to the Google Play Store. It could be another reason why Huawei decided to opt out from the Pixel affair.
Despite divided views on the Pixel matter, Google and Huawei won’t abandon working together in the future. A new phone is apparently scheduled to make a debut in the second half of 2017, but most interesting Huawei is rumored to be providing the launch platform for Google’s new Andromeda operating system.
Andromeda is Google’s initiative at unifying Chrome and Android and if word on the street is right, we’re going to see the OS make an appearance on an upcoming Huawei 7-inch tablet. It might even be launched as soon as the end of 2016.
In the meanwhile, the Android community is missing the Nexus brand and third-party OEMs have already expressed their desire to fill in the Nexus void. ZTE for example wants to build a near-stock Android device, to be sold at an affordable price-tag.
The company is polling users about the features they want to see onboard this future device, so if you want to participate check their Community page.
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