Despite the U.S. ban and its direct consequences, Huawei managed to post solid perfromance for most of 2019, continuing its growth. However, despite of all the positive financial numbers, it’s not an easy situation to be in, as Joy Tan, Huawei US vice president of public affairs told the Financial Times, as cited by CNET.

Tan admitted that operating without the official support from Google, and access to the Play store for apps like Chrome, Maps, etc., is “the most challenging part”. Tan also acknowledged that it might be years before Huawei’s own OS, HarmonyOS, could match Google’s suite of Android services.

At the Mate 30-series launch, Huawei committed to spending $1 billion to incentivize growth of its own ecosystem, as part of its plan to succeed without Google. Despite of all the setbacks, the Chinese tech-giant managed to sell 185 million devices in the first three quarters of the year, continuing its growth, crippled though by the U.S. ban.