As expected, it looks like Huawei are still in trouble after the whole entity list, and being banned by U.S. companies debacle earlier this year. But now, a senior Huawei executive has come out to say that Harmony, the proposed replacement for the Android system on their phones could take years to build.

Vice President of Public Affairs at Huawei US, Joy Tan, admitted this in an interview with the Financial Times. When asked if Harmony could take years to develop, Tan says;

“Yes. We have to find alternative solutions for that ecosystem, but it’s going to take some time to build. There are so many Android users in Europe and south-east Asia, and they’re so used to these Google applications on top of Android phones.”

These statements basically contradict what Richard Yu, Huawei’s CEO of Consumer BG said earlier this year. Yu mentioned that Harmony could be ready to ship early 2020, which is now in a few months.

The Chinese tech firm has certainly felt the effect from being hit with US sanctions. This was basically because the Trump administration believed that Huawei equipment could be used for spying, and therefore posed a national security risk.

One of the more immediate, and damaging effects, would be Google no longer being able to license apps and services to Huawei. And as you can tell by now, Android is basically Google. Even their latest smartphone, the Mate 30 series came with no Google apps, but was using an Open Source version of Android. And it was apparently when they took a blow in getting into the Western smartphone market (and basically anywhere outside of China).

As of now, older devices still have access to the Google Play store and the rest of the Google app suite. But only time will tell how long that’ll be supported for.

Honestly, there’s no telling how this will go, especially with the U.S. and China tensions at the moment. But one thing is certain, Huawei seems to be feeling the full brunt of this trade war, and have inevitably been a victim of it.