The move comes after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency over threats against US information and communications technology.

The US Commerce Department also added Huawei to the Bureau of Industry and Security Entity list, which means that any companies wishing to sell or transfer technology to Huawei must obtain government permission.

Google's severed relations with Huawei means that the Chinese tech behemoth will lose access to Android software updates and that its phones sold outside China will not have popular Google apps such as the Play Store and Gmail, Reuters reported.

Top chip makers such as Intel, Qualcomm Broadcom and Xilinx have also stopped supplying Huawei until further notice, Bloomberg said.

However, Huawei's phones have proved to be very popular around the globe, regardless of the fact that they've been difficult to buy in the US.

As the global smartphone market continued to decline in the first quarter of 2019, Huawei emerged as the only smartphone retailer among the top three device makers to see its volumes grow.

Part of the reason Huawei's products have become so pervasive is because of the company’s well-rounded product portfolio, which includes high-end smartphones in its Mate and P lines, as well as cheaper handsets that fall under its Honor offshoot brand.

With year-over-year growth of 50.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2019, Huawei is “within striking distance of Samsung at the top of the global market”, the International Data Corporation said.

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Check out what makes Huawei devices so popular.

Huawei smartphones are just as good as anything sold in US

In most respects, Huawei devices are not dissimilar from smartphones you can find in the US, at least when it comes to the Android ecosystem.

At the high-end, Huawei smartphones come with beautiful designs and high-end specifications and features that easily rival the top smartphones in the US, such as Samsung's Galaxy S10 and LG's G8 smartphones.

The company's Mate 20 Pro is highly regarded thanks to its beautiful design, excellent screen and snappy performance.

Huawei's flagship smartphones are also known for their impressive cameras. That is certainly true of the P30 Pro, which has four cameras.

The P30 Pro is rated as having a camera that's as good or even better than Google's Pixel 3, which is noteworthy since Google's smartphones are renowned for their photography-oriented features.

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Like Samsung, Huawei also offers several mid-range and budget devices that are more accessible to a wider range of people around the world.

The company's premium smartphones create a strong brand affiliation for its lower-end and mid-range models, which is a large part of the reason the company is the No 2 smartphone maker in the world, the IDC said.

Why you're unlikely to see a Huawei smartphone in the US

Even before Trump's executive order, finding Huawei phones in the US was a difficult challenge. That's because the US smartphone market is known to be one of the toughest to crack – largely because most Americans still buy their smartphones from network carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

If a smartphone maker strikes a deal with a US carrier to feature its smartphones at the carrier’s stores, the chance of success is significantly greater.

That consumer behaviour is different in most other countries around the world, where smartphone users do not always buy their smartphones from their carriers.

Instead, they are often bought directly from a company, tech stores and even dedicated smartphone stores, such the Carphone Warehouse in Britain.

As a result, global smartphone users are exposed to a wider variety of brands, including Chinese brands such as Huawei and Xiaomi.

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Even before Huawei was placed on the “entity” list, that all-important carrier partnership never came.

The company was on the brink of announcing a partnership with AT&T in January 2018, but the deal fell through after AT&T faced government pressure to drop the partnership because of ongoing national security concerns.

If you visit Huawei’s US website today you won't find the latest devices the company has to offer, such as the Mate 20 Pro.

Huawei devices can still operate on US carrier networks, but most Americans won't see a Huawei device on carrier store shelves.

As a result, most Americans may not even know about Huawei, the second biggest smartphone maker in the world.

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