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At what point does China just develop its own mobile OS? There seems value in just taking the reigns, and making whatever you create open-source, so that ZTE a

At what point does China just develop its own mobile OS? There seems value in just taking the reigns, and making whatever you create open-source, so that ZTE and all the other Chinese manufacturers can use it as well. Its certainly a major blow to the value of Huawei phones.

KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
Not just mobile... Huawei also makes really nice laptops and presumably MS/Intel are under the same obligation to sever relations with Huawei. Unless Huawei is going to make a huge retreat we might see a full on effort for a new OS that covers both usecases?
- yding 7y ago
  My guess is that they'll probably just sell off / kill off their computer business. It's not a huge money maker for them, and trying to switch people off Windows is super hard.
reaperducer 7y ago
At what point does China just develop its own mobile OS? Three months ago. https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3001685/huawei-confirms-it-has-built-its-own-operating-system-just-case-us https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3001685/huawei-co...
skvark 7y ago
It was announced in 2017 that China was investing in its own mobile OS based on Sailfish OS (http://www.goodnewsfinland.com/jolla-goes-full-steam-ahead-in-china/ http://www.goodnewsfinland.com/jolla-goes-full-steam-ahead-i...). I don't know what's the status of the project currently. Russia has had similar plans (http://rusletter.com/articles/operating_system_sailfish_from_rostelecom_for_officials_is_estimated_at_160_billion_rubles http://rusletter.com/articles/operating_system_sailfish_from...).
jorblumesea 7y ago
Even if they develop a mobile OS, will it be the quality and usefulness of Google services? Android is just linux + google services. Without those, it's hard to make the sell to western audiences, at least. Google Maps is a masterpiece of engineering and it's hard to imagine that Huawei will be able to compete, near term. If I'm reading the situation right, this might mean the end of Huawei in the western phone market unless something changes.
- pascoej 7y ago
  You can’t really use Google Maps in China. Even over VPN it’s outdated and often displays the wrong location due to the GPS scrambling that the government enforces on maps. Baidu Maps is very good though, I would even say on par with Google Maps and better in some areas. It does however have more obvious ads which is annoying.
  - jorblumesea 7y ago
    Huawei's market is international as well as domestic. Western users are used to Google services. So while they can work around the issue for Chinese users, they basically lose the western market. Who wants Android without the spectrum Google-like services? Which is a huge deal for Huawei, imo.
    - thro0239420342 7y ago
      You're too biased to see that Google is not actually indispensable. Chinese users don't see Google as indispensable obviously, and provided a choice, others may see it too.

KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago

Not just mobile... Huawei also makes really nice laptops and presumably MS/Intel are under the same obligation to sever relations with Huawei. Unless Huawei is going to make a huge retreat we might see a full on effort for a new OS that covers both usecases?

yding 7y ago
My guess is that they'll probably just sell off / kill off their computer business. It's not a huge money maker for them, and trying to switch people off Windows is super hard.

reaperducer 7y ago

At what point does China just develop its own mobile OS? Three months ago. https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3001685/huawei-confirms-it-has-built-its-own-operating-system-just-case-us https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3001685/huawei-co...

skvark 7y ago

It was announced in 2017 that China was investing in its own mobile OS based on Sailfish OS (http://www.goodnewsfinland.com/jolla-goes-full-steam-ahead-in-china/ http://www.goodnewsfinland.com/jolla-goes-full-steam-ahead-i...). I don't know what's the status of the project currently. Russia has had similar plans (http://rusletter.com/articles/operating_system_sailfish_from_rostelecom_for_officials_is_estimated_at_160_billion_rubles http://rusletter.com/articles/operating_system_sailfish_from...).

jorblumesea 7y ago

Even if they develop a mobile OS, will it be the quality and usefulness of Google services? Android is just linux + google services. Without those, it's hard to make the sell to western audiences, at least. Google Maps is a masterpiece of engineering and it's hard to imagine that Huawei will be able to compete, near term. If I'm reading the situation right, this might mean the end of Huawei in the western phone market unless something changes.

pascoej 7y ago
You can’t really use Google Maps in China. Even over VPN it’s outdated and often displays the wrong location due to the GPS scrambling that the government enforces on maps. Baidu Maps is very good though, I would even say on par with Google Maps and better in some areas. It does however have more obvious ads which is annoying.
- jorblumesea 7y ago
  Huawei's market is international as well as domestic. Western users are used to Google services. So while they can work around the issue for Chinese users, they basically lose the western market. Who wants Android without the spectrum Google-like services? Which is a huge deal for Huawei, imo.
  - thro0239420342 7y ago
    You're too biased to see that Google is not actually indispensable. Chinese users don't see Google as indispensable obviously, and provided a choice, others may see it too.