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To all those stating that Huawei should just make their own OS, it's nowhere near that simple. Forking Android is the easy part, building an app ecosystem that
by ghobs91 7y ago
To all those stating that Huawei should just make their own OS, it's nowhere near that simple. Forking Android is the easy part, building an app ecosystem that thousands of developers across the globe actively partake in is incredibly difficult. Microsoft couldn't even pull it off with Windows Phone.
I predict their own Android fork and China-focused app store will do fine in China, but struggle big time in other markets.
- xparco 7y agoSpeak for yourself prole...you are nowhere near Huawei's level.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- walrus01 7y agoDomestically within China, Huawei and other phones already use non-google-app-stores. https://technode.com/2018/08/13/android-china-q2-2018/ https://technode.com/2018/08/13/android-china-q2-2018/
- baybal2 7y agoWell, not only in China, but pretty much every other country where demand for Gaps is not an issue, and it was from day one for them as an Android vendor. It was the one and only Chinese brand with whom Google made a Nexus phone in the past — at least in part to lessen their enthusiasm in throwing out Google market in Western countries
- ehsankia 7y agoWell Play Store is not accessible in China, so they kinda have to.
- mayama 7y agoWill Huawei still have access to TSMC, Samsung fabs etc? I think Hardware should be more of an issue for them than software. Chinese phones already use some alternative to play store iirc.
- ghobs91 7y agoIt appears they're only losing access to American hardware and software. So that would mean Android, Gorilla Glass screens, Qualcomm processors, etc.
- moneywoes 7y agoWell they already have their own processors so I imagine that won't be a huge loss.
- yding 7y agoWhat about the ARM license? Sure they design their own processors but that doesn't help if ARM doesn't let them use the instruction set.
- Tsubasachan 7y agoThis could actually be a boon for China. Now they have to start developing their phones completely in-house. On the longer term that could be the end for American tech. If one thing the last 50 years has taught us is that whatever the US can do an Asian competitor can do as well.
- cududa 7y agoThat’s entirety the point of their Made In China 2025 initiative
- gameswithgo 7y agothe could make the phone an actual computer. that can download and run apps from where-ever. many of us are starving for that.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoThere are plenty of open source third party stories such as FDroid and Aptoide and Amazon's own store. On Android, you can even load APKs directly.
- brownbat 7y agoAgree in principle, though can't we get that by just allowing unauthorized sources? I guess you don't get the relative security of app stores, and there's no widespread culture of free apps on phones like on PCs. I'd really love, not a new phone or OS, but just an app store that works under a different model. Cheap or free for developers to post, but curated to exclude the most predatory forms of monetization.
- brownbat 7y agoI thought about this more this week. How do we solve the trusted app problem on PCs? We don't install whatever random thing comes up in google. We look for a trusted recommendation. App stores are just teaching us that it's ok to install any app, which is not necessarily the best security model.
- Faark 7y agoWindows Phone was in a way worse situation. They had to solve an M to N problem, getting apps to attract users while also getting users to attract developers. They tried to leverage their PC install base, but that apparently failed. The Chinese market on the other hand will always have users, is huge and I presume most developers won't be willing to give up on it. If they do, someone else will serve their customers and might become a future competitor globally. China-focused apps will only have to re-implement google services. That sound a lot easier to me than supporting an entirely different OS. If those versions can run on google phones as well, devs have the option to drop the play store version down the line to save cost. I wouldn't bet a lot on it, but this might be the best chance we ever had to get a real play store competitor.
- baybal2 7y agoWin mobile was a dominant mobile platform until Microsoft didn't nuke itself with non backward compatible, rewritten from scratch WinMo 7 Palm was a dominant mobile platform until Palm nuked itself with 5 years of clownade with Palm OS 6 Symbian was the biggest, most dominant mobile OS globally until Nokia didn't decide to simply trow it away. JM2E was the most largely adapted app platform, even into early Android years, until Oracle/Sun simply stopped licensing it... Now think just how thin is the ice Google is on now with it flirting with idea of "rebooting" Android with Fucsia
- wsgeorge 7y agoFor each example, weren't there viable alternatives lurking around to take advantage of the situation? I'm not familiar with Palm OS, but Symbian and JM2E both has the iPhone and Android OSs as growing threats. Google hasn't officially stated that it is rebooting Android, and even if they did (and did it right), there isn't a major alternative lurking around the corner...
- ezconnect 7y agoThere are a lot of alternative OS and playstore on different part of the world. Huawei has the resources and experience (including other Chinese companies experience since that's how they operate) to offer an alternative to the whole world. They have experience on chat and payment software and infrastructure system used by millions of people in their country.
- yskchu 7y agoThe difference between Huawei's situation and Microsoft's situation is that Microsoft's app store is not compatible with Android or IOS (obviously, different OS) While if Huawei uses the Android open source base, the only thing they have to do is entice developers to submit another copy of their app to their store, which is a much lower barrier than the one MS faced to develop a whole new ecosystem
- ghobs91 7y agoWhile true, this is also the case for Amazon's app store, and their app selection is a fraction of the Play store to this day.
- morpheuskafka 7y agoNot if that app depends on Google Play Services, which most developers targeting "Android" take for granted.
- askvictor 7y agoPerhaps Huawei will assist in the development of microg (https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/) - a free (as in freedom) drop-in replacement for Google Play Services.
- snaky 7y agoHuawei will never do that, the very concept of free or open-source is absolutely alien to them. But they could develop some kind of their own Play Services, compatible with Google.
- graton 7y agoHuawei contributes to open source projects right now. I know they have been contributing to OpenStack for years and likely other open-source projects. https://www.stackalytics.com/?company=huawei&metric=commits&release=stein https://www.stackalytics.com/?company=huawei&metric=commits&...
- seppin 7y ago> I predict their own Android fork and China-focused app store will do fine in China, but struggle big time in other markets. Why would they need it to be popular anywhere other than China?
- rchaud 7y agoBecause they have spent years trying to increase market share in Europe and South America, and are only now seeing the fruits of that labor. In the Chinese market they have to compete on price against Xiaomi, Oppo and many, many others, whereas in overseas markets their offerings (minus the P30 flagship) have a big price advantage over Samsung and Apple.
- onetimemanytime 7y agowhat if all Chinese companies create an appstore? Might have to do it. These things, and I'm not passing judgment on them, are simply pushing the Chinese to be self-sufficient on everything. Stroke of the Trump pen and X chip for your hardware is denied.