The News
Huawei is set to launch its latest smartphone this week, complete with a new, made-in-China operating system — a first for a Chinese company and an indication of the progress the country’s tech companies have made, despite US sanctions.
Unlike previous Huawei phones, which used an operating system built on Google’s Android, the new Mate 70 smartphone will run entirely on the company’s own HarmonyOS Next. Huawei hopes the system will be able to compete with the dominant incumbents, Apple’s iOS and Android, which together power around 98% of all smartphones globally, The Economist noted.
“This is a significant turning point for China, it’s being driven by the fear that the US could cut off everything,” a tech expert at a consulting firm told the Financial Times.
SIGNALS
Huawei’s fully independent operating system ‘no mean feat’
Building a fully independent operating system “is no mean feat,” The Economist noted, because it requires persuading enough developers to spend time creating apps specifically for the new system: “Shifting its devices to the new system risks hurting Huawei’s smartphone sales. Android offers users several million apps; if Chinese people cannot find their favourite ones, they may opt for another phone.” When Huawei’s last smartphone was released in 2023, only about 100 apps had been developed for HarmonyOS. As of October this year, that number was about 15,000, the South China Morning Post reported. Yet beta testers and developers said the system still has some way to go to be fully functional, the Financial Times reported.
Huawei remains resilient to US sanctions
As China’s top domestic telecom company, Huawei has been a focus of the US’ crackdown on Chinese tech: Washington blacklisted the company in 2012, and has severely restricted how much US businesses can deal with it. Yet Huawei has cemented itself as a tech juggernaut, albeit with the help of Beijing, which has reportedly provided it $30 billion in subsidies. US tensions may also aid it: Huawei’s sales have recently surged in China while Apple’s have dropped. Huawei has developed its own high-performance chips, and a $1.4 billion research and development center in Shanghai. The company was also rumored to be building a secret network of semiconductor factories to further skirt US sanctions, Bloomberg reported.
Second Trump administration unlikely to depart from previous stance
Huawei was an “explosive topic” during US President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, tech outlet Light Reading noted, with the Chinese company becoming “emblematic of China’s perceived sins.” With the president-elect’s recent nomination of China hawk Marco Rubio as secretary of state, Huawei could become a focal point once more: In October, Rubio claimed in an opinion essay that Huawei’s goal was “global domination.” Yet while Trump campaigned on anti-China proposals, the priorities could shift: “His lifelong business background reveals an inherently opportunistic nature,” a political scientist wrote in The Diplomat, adding that Trump’s approach will depend on what happens between Beijing and Washington once he is in office, including, potentially, “a temporary détente if business interests exert sufficient pressure.”