11 ms·

It’s possible that Google cutting off Huawei will actually backfire, because it makes having a viable alternative to Android a MUST HAVE instead of just NICE TO

by harryf 7y ago

It’s possible that Google cutting off Huawei will actually backfire, because it makes having a viable alternative to Android a MUST HAVE instead of just NICE TO HAVE. Perhaps it’s possible to resurrect Blackberry 10 ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_10 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_10 ) for example, which seemed to be an impressive piece of engineering that got trampled by Blackberrys failing business. I played with a demo once that could run Android apps and was amazing at multi-tasking thanks to its microkernel architecture. Plus would be governed by Canadian export laws I guess. Perhaps I’m just daydreaming though. Either way think it’s going to lead to more mobile OS competition again, which is a good thing

rickdeckard 7y ago
BB10 is based on QNX platform, I strongly doubt that QNX is independent from any US assets, patents, licenses, so moving from Android to BB10 is just "more of the same"
- geocar 7y ago
  Blackberry is a Canadian company. Harman International (the former owner of QNX) was a subsidiary of a South Korean company. I don't understand what you mean about "US assets, patents, licenses" -- what are you thinking about here?
- bregma 7y ago
  QNX developer here. I don't think what you're saying is true. QNX has patents registered in the USA, and in other countries, but that's hardly relevant. It's a Canadian company owned by a Canadian corporation. BB10, on the other hand, is dead and buried. It would be easier to port something like UBPort's Ubuntu Touch to QNX as an alternative to Android.
  - seabrookmx 7y ago
    What's QNX used for nowadays? Car infotainment systems? Anything else standout?
    - bregma 7y ago
      You can run your in-car infotainment system on Linux, Mac OS, or Windows. QNX can run your brakes and your ignition. Your car dashboard (cockpit console). Your insulin pump. You cancer treatment radiotherapy device. Interplanetary space probes. High-speed rail systems. Everywhere you need software to just always work without a "Windows has experienced a problem and needs to restart" or the Linux equivalent of just silently hanging and requiring a hard power cycle. QNX predates phones by decades, the BB10 was just a passing thing. But sure, it's also in infotainment systems and at the heart of self-driving cars.
      - seabrookmx 7y ago
        QNX being built from the ground up as a realtime system is a big part of it's reliability and suitability to these tasks I imagine?
dogma1138 7y ago
Really? Do you think Samsung and LG would be more likely to develop not to mention support an Android competitor? This ban is the best thing that happened to Korean mobile phone manufacturers for years. Huawei was breathing down Sammy’s neck things are looking much bright for them now.
- rickdeckard 7y ago
  Not really. The situation is much more opening the space for OTHER Chinese vendors to jump in and grab the market. Samsung is already selling in all channels where Huawei is, so they have their shelf-space allocated already. That slot will not remain vacant. LG can surely grab a bit more business in short-term for sales-channels they were not selling to, because even if they are not in a specific channel, they have products ready and tested for the market to fill the gap immediately. TCL/Alcatel has maybe some opportunities in low-price device-tier as well, because they have established relationships with many carriers and retailers. On the other hand, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Xiaomi are all not sanctioned by US, all of them offer comparable products with a very similar price and aggressively try to expand their international presence. So I expect mainly a Oppo/Vivo/OnePlus vs. Xiaomi vs. TCL/Alcatel fight for every slot Huawei is at risk to lose...
  - NotPaidToPost 7y ago
    EE (owned by BT) launched its 5G lineup in London this week. They dropped Huawei but had a OnePlus instead. More Chinese brands pop up every time you try to cut one off ;)
    - seniorivn 7y ago
      You will be surprised how good it will be for poping up chenese if you cut off ccp and all of it subbrands like huawei and etc
- tushar-r 7y ago
  >Do you think Samsung and LG would be more likely to develop not to mention support an Android competitor? Samsung tried this with Tizen, IIRC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen
TsomArp 7y ago
I believe that is not actually google that cut off Huawei, but but US government prohibits any US company to make business with them.
- noselasd 7y ago
  Both are true. Google cut off Huawei because the US government told them to.
  - TsomArp 7y ago
    It is not like they had an option. They are a US based company. They must do it.
    - reacweb 7y ago
      I fully agree. Google had to comply, but it is not in its advantage because it shows that Google is too much powerful and that is problematic.
      - pm90 7y ago
        No, it shows that the US is too powerful. All the craziness about preventing American internet companies from dominating the Domestic Chinese market makes total sense now, doesn't it? If the Chinese economy had been built around Facebook, Google etc. the US would have a lot of leverage, since they're all US-based companies and _must_ comply with whatever US Government asks them to do.
        hardboiled 7y ago
        The Chinese government has prevented plenty of US companies from doing business in China including Google, but more importantly is the rejection of patents and intellectual property and espionage conducted by Chinese government, which has cost US companies billions and the US government hundreds of lives.
EGreg 7y ago
Isn’t Android open source? So why can’t Huawei simply fork it?
- qwertydog 7y ago
  I think the main issue is the play store is off limits i.e. no existing android apps
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    The play store is unavailable within China anyway, so alternatives certainly exist.
  - enriquto 7y ago
    The play store is not the sole way to distribute apps. You can download the .apk files, or get them by mail, or use another play store that has the same apps. The play store is just a repository of some apps.
    - lol768 7y ago
      I believe the Play store is treated 'special' though - F-Droid can't install apps in the same way unless you're rooted and install the priv-app.
      - zmmmmm 7y ago
        On a phone licensing the Play Store sure. But on a Huawei phone free of those restrictions they can make it use any store they want without any special restrictions. Of course, it becomes a question what that means for security, but still.
      - bluGill 7y ago
        That seems like a violation of anit-trustlaws. I'm surprised the FSF hasn't pursued this route against google.
      - josinalvo 7y ago
shaan7 7y ago
There is Sailfish which won't be affected by the US government https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/mobile-tabs/huaweis-android-ban-could-benefit-alternative-os-like-sailfish-os-jolla-ceo-5742472/ https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/mobile-tabs/hua...
- Nokinside 7y ago
  It would not be surprising if Huawei attempts several strategies in parallel and buys several small mobile OS and mobile UI technology companies at once. Buying both Sailfish and Qt would be peanuts for Huawei.
TheOperator 7y ago
>It’s possible that Google cutting off Huawei will actually backfire, because it makes having a viable alternative to Android a MUST HAVE instead of just NICE TO HAVE. I got the impression that the United States forced their hand.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Yeah, the narrative on a lot of these stories "Google bans Huawei from Android", "Microsoft drops Huawei laptop from store", etc. are kinda silly, as the headlines suggest these companies had anything to do with it. They're following the law.
ehonda 7y ago
I have both an S9 and a BlackBerry Q10 on me every day. The BB10 OS, even though its now defunct, was designed in a way that it is FAR easier and more practical to use. I really, really hate the Android interface as a result. 1: BlackBerry hub is a lot nicer to view messages 2: Smart use of Bezel gestures makes it much easier to actually interact with the phone: -If you want to access the hub while using an app, you take your thumb from the bottom of the screen and swipe up and to the right. The interface is very forgiving of where you swipe, you can do it without even looking, yet you wont accidentally do it either. If you don't want to fully enter the hub and just take a peak without leaving your app, just do a partial swipe. -If you want to view all your running apps, you swipe up from the bottom of the screen to the middle of the screen, and voila , you get a tile arrangement of your running apps (easier to view than a Rolodex), as well as phone and camera access. And you are also less likely to lose track of what windows you have open. I find lots of peoples android phones have like 30 windows open - this is a fault of its interface. -If you want to access your apps, swipe up from bottom bezel (shows running apps), and then swipe left, now you can view all your other apps. -Every app is expected to have its settings menu accessible by swiping down from the top bezel. There are no silly little cumbersome function buttons at the bottom like Android has (the back/home/apps buttons). Smart use of bezel gestures make this unnecessary. Everything can be accessed easily in a simple, comfortable gesture with your thumb. As a result, it is a lot faster to use day in day out. And it is not as cluttered as Android. I am sad the whole world chose Android. It's a crappy interface.
- nextos 7y ago
  BB10 is nice. Meego, as seen in the Nokia N9 was a really good UI too. Extremely elegant card interface, that meshed so well with a curved OLED screen. In 2011. I would love to see an alternative to the iOS / Android duopoly. One way to go would be a better F-Droid ecosystem, and pure AOSP. But perhaps, even better, a true Linux userland. Maemo lives on with Jolla. Although I hate they still have many closed components.
  - aerique 7y ago
    Sailfish is the OS that runs on Jolla and nowadays also on the Xperia X and XA2 phones, although I heard it is not really available in the US (why?). It's somewhat of an alternative to iOS & Android and feels like running Linux 20 years ago. You are making it harder on yourself. Running Android apps with microg installed on it provides a decent fallback.
tw04 7y ago
Had blackberry made messenger multi-platform 15 years ago, and released an email app for iOS and Android they would still own the business market. Even in 2019 email sucks on a modern smartphone compared to blackberry in 2004. I'm still hoping Apple wakes up and releases messenger for Windows and Android before that ship sails. They claim to be a services company but they still can't seem to let go of tying it to devices.
- djrogers 7y ago
  > They claim to be a services company but they still can't seem to let go of tying it to devices. They've shipped apple music on Andriod since day 1, have had it on Sonos for several years, and in the last 6 months have announced & started to ship TV on tons of actual TVs and non-apple straming boxes. They've 'let go' of tying services to devices, but iMessage isn't a paid service so the advantage to shipping it on other platforms is lower.
  - tw04 7y ago
    >They've shipped apple music on Andriod since day 1 They acquired a product (beast music) that already had an Android version and didn't deprecate it, congrats? >have had it on Sonos for several years Sonos had to pay a license and write the code... I'm not sure I'd hold that up as an example of them being open. > started to ship TV on tons of actual TVs and non-apple straming boxes. Literally hasn't been released and isn't scheduled to be until "Fall of 2019". >They've 'let go' of tying services to devices, but iMessage isn't a paid service so the advantage to shipping it on other platforms is lower. Right, so charge for Messenger on other platforms. Nobody asked them to give it away.
    - votepaunchy 7y ago
      >> started to ship TV on tons of actual TVs and non-apple straming boxes. > Literally hasn't been released and isn't scheduled to be until "Fall of 2019". “A whole new world of entertainment just opened up, because the Apple TV app is now available on select 2018 and 2019 Samsung TVs...” https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00082624/ https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00082624/
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
amelius 7y ago
> I played with a demo once that could run Android apps But of course Google would never allow BB users to access the play store ...
CountSessine 7y ago
It’s possible that Google cutting off Huawei will actually backfire, because it makes having a viable alternative to Android a MUST HAVE instead of just NICE TO HAVE. It's a must-have for the small companies like Xiaomi that only or mostly make smartphones. But they can't afford to develop an android alternative. Huawei and Samsung make lots of things other than smartphones and can just leave the market if need be. It's less expensive for both of them to shutter their smartphone business than it is to develop a viable android alternative that developers would want to code for and that consumers would want to use. Either way think it’s going to lead to more mobile OS competition again, which is a good thing Unlikely.

by harryf 7y ago

rickdeckard 7y ago

BB10 is based on QNX platform, I strongly doubt that QNX is independent from any US assets, patents, licenses, so moving from Android to BB10 is just "more of the same"

geocar 7y ago
Blackberry is a Canadian company. Harman International (the former owner of QNX) was a subsidiary of a South Korean company. I don't understand what you mean about "US assets, patents, licenses" -- what are you thinking about here?
bregma 7y ago
QNX developer here. I don't think what you're saying is true. QNX has patents registered in the USA, and in other countries, but that's hardly relevant. It's a Canadian company owned by a Canadian corporation. BB10, on the other hand, is dead and buried. It would be easier to port something like UBPort's Ubuntu Touch to QNX as an alternative to Android.
- seabrookmx 7y ago
  What's QNX used for nowadays? Car infotainment systems? Anything else standout?
  - bregma 7y ago
    You can run your in-car infotainment system on Linux, Mac OS, or Windows. QNX can run your brakes and your ignition. Your car dashboard (cockpit console). Your insulin pump. You cancer treatment radiotherapy device. Interplanetary space probes. High-speed rail systems. Everywhere you need software to just always work without a "Windows has experienced a problem and needs to restart" or the Linux equivalent of just silently hanging and requiring a hard power cycle. QNX predates phones by decades, the BB10 was just a passing thing. But sure, it's also in infotainment systems and at the heart of self-driving cars.
    - seabrookmx 7y ago
      QNX being built from the ground up as a realtime system is a big part of it's reliability and suitability to these tasks I imagine?

dogma1138 7y ago

Really? Do you think Samsung and LG would be more likely to develop not to mention support an Android competitor? This ban is the best thing that happened to Korean mobile phone manufacturers for years. Huawei was breathing down Sammy’s neck things are looking much bright for them now.

rickdeckard 7y ago
Not really. The situation is much more opening the space for OTHER Chinese vendors to jump in and grab the market. Samsung is already selling in all channels where Huawei is, so they have their shelf-space allocated already. That slot will not remain vacant. LG can surely grab a bit more business in short-term for sales-channels they were not selling to, because even if they are not in a specific channel, they have products ready and tested for the market to fill the gap immediately. TCL/Alcatel has maybe some opportunities in low-price device-tier as well, because they have established relationships with many carriers and retailers. On the other hand, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Xiaomi are all not sanctioned by US, all of them offer comparable products with a very similar price and aggressively try to expand their international presence. So I expect mainly a Oppo/Vivo/OnePlus vs. Xiaomi vs. TCL/Alcatel fight for every slot Huawei is at risk to lose...
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  EE (owned by BT) launched its 5G lineup in London this week. They dropped Huawei but had a OnePlus instead. More Chinese brands pop up every time you try to cut one off ;)
  - seniorivn 7y ago
    You will be surprised how good it will be for poping up chenese if you cut off ccp and all of it subbrands like huawei and etc
tushar-r 7y ago
>Do you think Samsung and LG would be more likely to develop not to mention support an Android competitor? Samsung tried this with Tizen, IIRC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen

TsomArp 7y ago

I believe that is not actually google that cut off Huawei, but but US government prohibits any US company to make business with them.

noselasd 7y ago
Both are true. Google cut off Huawei because the US government told them to.
- TsomArp 7y ago
  It is not like they had an option. They are a US based company. They must do it.
  - reacweb 7y ago
    I fully agree. Google had to comply, but it is not in its advantage because it shows that Google is too much powerful and that is problematic.
    - pm90 7y ago
      No, it shows that the US is too powerful. All the craziness about preventing American internet companies from dominating the Domestic Chinese market makes total sense now, doesn't it? If the Chinese economy had been built around Facebook, Google etc. the US would have a lot of leverage, since they're all US-based companies and _must_ comply with whatever US Government asks them to do.
      - hardboiled 7y ago
        The Chinese government has prevented plenty of US companies from doing business in China including Google, but more importantly is the rejection of patents and intellectual property and espionage conducted by Chinese government, which has cost US companies billions and the US government hundreds of lives.

EGreg 7y ago

Isn’t Android open source? So why can’t Huawei simply fork it?

qwertydog 7y ago
I think the main issue is the play store is off limits i.e. no existing android apps
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  The play store is unavailable within China anyway, so alternatives certainly exist.
- enriquto 7y ago
  The play store is not the sole way to distribute apps. You can download the .apk files, or get them by mail, or use another play store that has the same apps. The play store is just a repository of some apps.
  - lol768 7y ago
    I believe the Play store is treated 'special' though - F-Droid can't install apps in the same way unless you're rooted and install the priv-app.
    - zmmmmm 7y ago
      On a phone licensing the Play Store sure. But on a Huawei phone free of those restrictions they can make it use any store they want without any special restrictions. Of course, it becomes a question what that means for security, but still.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      That seems like a violation of anit-trustlaws. I'm surprised the FSF hasn't pursued this route against google.
    - josinalvo 7y ago

shaan7 7y ago

There is Sailfish which won't be affected by the US government https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/mobile-tabs/huaweis-android-ban-could-benefit-alternative-os-like-sailfish-os-jolla-ceo-5742472/ https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/mobile-tabs/hua...

Nokinside 7y ago
It would not be surprising if Huawei attempts several strategies in parallel and buys several small mobile OS and mobile UI technology companies at once. Buying both Sailfish and Qt would be peanuts for Huawei.

TheOperator 7y ago

>It’s possible that Google cutting off Huawei will actually backfire, because it makes having a viable alternative to Android a MUST HAVE instead of just NICE TO HAVE. I got the impression that the United States forced their hand.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Yeah, the narrative on a lot of these stories "Google bans Huawei from Android", "Microsoft drops Huawei laptop from store", etc. are kinda silly, as the headlines suggest these companies had anything to do with it. They're following the law.

ehonda 7y ago

I have both an S9 and a BlackBerry Q10 on me every day. The BB10 OS, even though its now defunct, was designed in a way that it is FAR easier and more practical to use. I really, really hate the Android interface as a result. 1: BlackBerry hub is a lot nicer to view messages 2: Smart use of Bezel gestures makes it much easier to actually interact with the phone: -If you want to access the hub while using an app, you take your thumb from the bottom of the screen and swipe up and to the right. The interface is very forgiving of where you swipe, you can do it without even looking, yet you wont accidentally do it either. If you don't want to fully enter the hub and just take a peak without leaving your app, just do a partial swipe. -If you want to view all your running apps, you swipe up from the bottom of the screen to the middle of the screen, and voila , you get a tile arrangement of your running apps (easier to view than a Rolodex), as well as phone and camera access. And you are also less likely to lose track of what windows you have open. I find lots of peoples android phones have like 30 windows open - this is a fault of its interface. -If you want to access your apps, swipe up from bottom bezel (shows running apps), and then swipe left, now you can view all your other apps. -Every app is expected to have its settings menu accessible by swiping down from the top bezel. There are no silly little cumbersome function buttons at the bottom like Android has (the back/home/apps buttons). Smart use of bezel gestures make this unnecessary. Everything can be accessed easily in a simple, comfortable gesture with your thumb. As a result, it is a lot faster to use day in day out. And it is not as cluttered as Android. I am sad the whole world chose Android. It's a crappy interface.

nextos 7y ago
BB10 is nice. Meego, as seen in the Nokia N9 was a really good UI too. Extremely elegant card interface, that meshed so well with a curved OLED screen. In 2011. I would love to see an alternative to the iOS / Android duopoly. One way to go would be a better F-Droid ecosystem, and pure AOSP. But perhaps, even better, a true Linux userland. Maemo lives on with Jolla. Although I hate they still have many closed components.
- aerique 7y ago
  Sailfish is the OS that runs on Jolla and nowadays also on the Xperia X and XA2 phones, although I heard it is not really available in the US (why?). It's somewhat of an alternative to iOS & Android and feels like running Linux 20 years ago. You are making it harder on yourself. Running Android apps with microg installed on it provides a decent fallback.

tw04 7y ago

Had blackberry made messenger multi-platform 15 years ago, and released an email app for iOS and Android they would still own the business market. Even in 2019 email sucks on a modern smartphone compared to blackberry in 2004. I'm still hoping Apple wakes up and releases messenger for Windows and Android before that ship sails. They claim to be a services company but they still can't seem to let go of tying it to devices.

djrogers 7y ago
> They claim to be a services company but they still can't seem to let go of tying it to devices. They've shipped apple music on Andriod since day 1, have had it on Sonos for several years, and in the last 6 months have announced & started to ship TV on tons of actual TVs and non-apple straming boxes. They've 'let go' of tying services to devices, but iMessage isn't a paid service so the advantage to shipping it on other platforms is lower.
- tw04 7y ago
  >They've shipped apple music on Andriod since day 1 They acquired a product (beast music) that already had an Android version and didn't deprecate it, congrats? >have had it on Sonos for several years Sonos had to pay a license and write the code... I'm not sure I'd hold that up as an example of them being open. > started to ship TV on tons of actual TVs and non-apple straming boxes. Literally hasn't been released and isn't scheduled to be until "Fall of 2019". >They've 'let go' of tying services to devices, but iMessage isn't a paid service so the advantage to shipping it on other platforms is lower. Right, so charge for Messenger on other platforms. Nobody asked them to give it away.
  - votepaunchy 7y ago
    >> started to ship TV on tons of actual TVs and non-apple straming boxes. > Literally hasn't been released and isn't scheduled to be until "Fall of 2019". “A whole new world of entertainment just opened up, because the Apple TV app is now available on select 2018 and 2019 Samsung TVs...” https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00082624/ https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00082624/

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

amelius 7y ago

> I played with a demo once that could run Android apps But of course Google would never allow BB users to access the play store ...

CountSessine 7y ago

It’s possible that Google cutting off Huawei will actually backfire, because it makes having a viable alternative to Android a MUST HAVE instead of just NICE TO HAVE. It's a must-have for the small companies like Xiaomi that only or mostly make smartphones. But they can't afford to develop an android alternative. Huawei and Samsung make lots of things other than smartphones and can just leave the market if need be. It's less expensive for both of them to shutter their smartphone business than it is to develop a viable android alternative that developers would want to code for and that consumers would want to use. Either way think it’s going to lead to more mobile OS competition again, which is a good thing Unlikely.