When the USA placed Huawei on its entity list last April, two of the companies which quickly distanced themselves from the vendor were Google and ARM. The former created one of the biggest challenges for the Chinese vendor, which was poised to challenge Samsung to be the world’s largest smartphone supplier, but with a product line that ran Google’s Android operating system. Although Huawei can use the open source version of Android, it can no longer offer Google’s own applications, such as Maps, Search and the Play Store, which outside China are intrinsic to the user experience for many customers. Huawei’s response was to dust off an old project to create its own Linux-based mobile OS and applications and seek…