Huawei Challenges Google, Apple With New Smartphone Operating System
Huawei Challenges Google, Apple With New Smartphone Operating System
Establishing
a competitive alternative operating system to Apple's iOS and Google's Android
has been attempted before: both Microsoft and Samsung have tried and failed.
But since being cut off from using Android, along with most of the popular
American social media apps (most of which are already banned in China), Huawei
has no choice but to launch its own operating system if it wants to keep selling
smartphones.
Huawei is hoping it might encourage South Korean giant Samsung
or at the very least some of the other Chinese smartphone makers, like Xiaomi,
to try its new operating system on some of their phones.
Google has held the No. 1 spot for most-used smartphone
operating system virtually since Android was introduced. Before Huawei, other
challengers have had limited success unseating Google. Years ago, Samsung
launched a rival operating system called "Tizen," but it never gained
any traction. Microsoft also tried selling a phone with a mobile version of
Windows, but it also sold poorly.
According to WSJ, Huawei
is targeting 200MM phones with Harmony installed by the end of the year - what
many third-party analysts would describe as an extremely lofty, if not
unrealistic, goal.
"It’s a giant leap," said Nicole Peng, an analyst at
market-research firm Canalys. "There isn’t a successful case of an
alternative operating system out there," she said. "It takes many,
many years to be able to build up that ecosystem and get all the stakeholders
to be able to agree on it and see the benefit of it."
For years now, Huawei has been pushing developers to build
programs for the company’s app store, AppGallery. The company has already
launched some apps to replace those whose access it lost. For example, a
program called Petal Maps replaces Google Maps, while Petal Search replaces the
phone’s Google search bar. Aside from Xiaomi, the other two major Chinese
smartphone brands are Oppo and Vivo.
A handful of Chinese manufacturers are already running Harmony
OS on smart appliances, including Midea, a home-appliance giant. The operating
system is designed to pair with Huawei smartphones, though these devices are
only found in China.
If anything, Huawei's long-shot embrace of its own operating
system just shows how badly Trump's aggressive trade policies have hurt the
Chinese telecom giant, which has been accused of facilitating spying by the
Chinese government.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/huawei-challenges-google-apple-new-smartphone-operating-system
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