ProtonMail denies being in talks with Huawei about cooperation

ProtonMail denies that it is in talks with Huawei to make the app standard on the manufacturer’s phones. According to the privacy-friendly mail service, statements by the company have been taken out of context.

ProtonMail is responding to reports from Bloomberg last week. The news agency then wrote that ProtonMail would be in talks with Huawei to pre-install the app on future phones. ProtonMail now responds firmly that this is not the case.

Bloomberg’s misreporting was based on a previous ProtonMail blog post. In it, the Swiss company writes how it is thinking about alternatives to the Play Store. ProtonMail is investigating the possibilities of offering the app in alternative ways. This can be done, for example, via alternative app stores such as F-droid or via the own stores of Amazon and Samsung. In addition, ProtonMail also explicitly mentions Huawei and the recent problems that may prevent Huawei phones from running Google services in the future. “Huawei devices are very popular in developing countries, where ProtonMail has many users. It is therefore essential that we can also publish the app in Huawei’s AppGallery,” the company wrote earlier.

According to ProtonMail, the latter was misinterpreted by many media. Although the company says it is in talks with Huawei, those talks are only about the possibility of offering ProtonMail on Huawei devices. “That is already possible via the Play Store, so nothing really changes yet.” The company says that Chinese users are also safe from retrieval by the Chinese government. After all, ProtonMail’s servers are located in Switzerland.