You've probably already heard about the Huawei ban recently. Huawei has been blacklisted from working with us companies including Google because of apparent security concerns. It's already had a massive effect in the UK, Huawei was cut from the 5g launch lineup and Huawei has literally just cancelled his recent laptop launch due to the inability to supply. So it's becoming this looming question, how on earth can Huawei compete in the smartphone market without working with Google? the company that owns Android.
It all starts in a villa in Shenzhen in 2012, where behind closed doors there was a top-secret meeting with a group of high-level Huawei executives. They decided there and then that a new proprietary operating system should be built presumably because the company was growing rapidly at the time and they couldn't let their entire fate rest just on androids shoulders. Within months they created a specialised zone inside the company to work on this project internally known as Arcos, completely top-secret at the time. They even had guards on duty protecting the doors and any worker there was not allowed to use their personal mobile phone. This was that confidential, and turns out this might well all be about to come in handy whilst it hasn't released yet.
This operating system is now a very real thing. It's going to be called Hong Ming OS in China and apparently oke OS in other regions, but the most interesting part is that it could be up to sixty percent faster than Android. Nonetheless it's kind of clear the hallway has been taken by surprise here even though they've been working on this project for years because of how suddenly the band came into action.
It's still not ready, one thing is clear though, the fact that this is now one of their top priorities and the CEO has even announced that it'll be available as early as fall this year which coincides with when they might launch the mate 30 Pro. Don't get me wrong, this whole situation is kind of prickly but at the same time it's kind of exciting. From some sources Hong Ling is being dogged as less of a last resort for hallway and more of a next-gen bit of software.
According to a job listing Huawei has been hiring full-time engineers to work on a secret operating system that apparently focuses on tying in of augmented reality and autonomous self-driving vehicles. So the fact that it could be coming so soon and the fact that it could be such a real competitor to Android creates a really interesting dynamic between Huawei and Google. Before I can get to that let me show you how the software works. So huawei can't do business directly with Google but take a look at this one of the apparent early screenshots of this operating system.
You can see that the weather app is compatible with the Android Green Alliance. so it's not Android but it's looking like it's at least in part based on Android and can run Android apps. this is Android without Google services so no Google Play Store, no Google Maps, no Gmail plus, and no security updates from Google or Google Play protect, which all sounds pretty unappealing but if any company can work around it, it's Huawei.
Take a look at this, it's called aptoide. aptoide is an alternative Android app store with over 800,000 apps and if something like that can exist, then Huawei it can sustain one. They actually already have a store called app gallery and funnily enough they've just started emailing developers to ask them to move their apps onto it and I reckon a lot of them will just do it because Huawei sells millions of phones and developers don't want to miss out on that market.
Besides, because Hong ming OS can run Android applications nothing needs to be recoded. what is potentially even more interesting is that apparently Xiaomi, vivo and Oppo are also testing hongming OS on their phones. Maybe they also want to diversify it the same way that, while we did and to be fair if the operating system is as fast as Huawei is claiming then who wouldn't want a slice of that pie. So if those companies also choose to start using hongming os then in one fell swoop over a third of the smart phones in the world could shift to this new operating system.
But here's the crux of the complication, Google doesn't want this to happen. Google does not want Huawei to have its own operating system. Google does not want Huawei to have its own store, because this creates fragmentation as it stands apart from iOS. Google has an almost complete monopoly on smartphones pretty much every single phone runs on Android and Google makes money from it. It makes money from the Play Store, it makes money every time someone subscribes to Google play music and it makes money from the adverts inside Google Maps. So right now Google is actually trying to convince the US government that instead of actually saving themselves from a security risk by banning Huawei they'd actually be putting themselves in. Their logic is that if Huawei starts pumping out devices with a completely new operating system then these phones would be more durable to malware they won't have Google's protection in them. Let's say that you're in the US on your Samsung phone and you send a message to someone in the UK who's on a huawei phone infected with malware, in that scenario there's a pretty good chance that your message can be read by any malware on that device even without using the Huawei yourself the security of the whole mobile phone ecosystem could be at risk. That doesn't mean this would be the case. It's just the argument that Google is using to try and stop Huawei.
The way I see it, there are two possible outcomes to this whole situation:
First: Google pleading the US government combined with the mounting political pressure might make the US retract the ban on Huawei which would allow them to use full Android just as they used to.
Second: Huawei is really trying to compromise here they've actually pitched a no spy deal to the US government saying that they could completely lock their phones up so that there was no way a backdoor could be used to retrieve us information. It's completely possible then that the US could instead of retracting its ban add exceptions to it while we would be allowed to carry on dealing with certain suppliers under certain conditions.
In the meantime all we can do is hope because, let's face it, even if you wouldn't go near a huawei phone just then being there in the smartphone market raising the bar creating new things it pushes the industry forward to more. Competition is always better for the consumer.
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