Huawei’s relationship with the US has gone from tough to almost non-existent in the past six months. And now with threats that it could no longer be able to use Android itself, Huawei has reportedly begun developing its own alternative to Android. This is according to a post out of the South China Morning Post. Now Huawei has not actually lost its license for using Android, but ZTE – another Chinese smartphone maker – has almost lost its license. Which is forcing other companies from China to step up and make sure they cross their T’s and dot their I’s. But Huawei is making sure that if tensions between China and the US heat up even more, that it has a fallback plan.
Android is the most popular platform in the world for smartphones, but other companies have been working on their own operating systems in the past few years. Samsung has spent a good amount of cash and R&D on its own Tizen platform, though it hasn’t really taken off yet, and now there’s reports that Huawei is doing the same. Huawei’s operating system hasn’t yet seen the light of day, and while there’s no known reason why, it’s most likely because there’s not enough third-party app support, and/or because it’s not as mature as something like Android and iOS. Huawei’s co-founder was the one that set this plan in motion, though this isn’t the first time Huawei has been reportedly working on its own OS, as it actually began this back in 2012, but was shelved shortly after.
Huawei has had a tough few months in the US, and the Trump Administration has undoubtedly made it tougher for companies like Huawei to make it in the US. With ZTE possibly losing its license to use Android, it wouldn’t be a surprise if that also happened to Huawei. Two companies that are being pushed out of the US for different reasons, but both are China-based. The US and China are in the midst of a trade war, and these could be two casualties of that trade war. Huawei has not been public about this operating system just yet, but it likely won’t until it’s ready to go, and that’s only if they are revoked from using Android in the future.