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Chinese tech giant Huawei this week unveiled its first smartphone equipped with a fully homegrown operating system, a key test in the firm's fight to challenge the dominance of Western juggernauts.
Apple's iOS and Google's Android are currently used in the vast majority of mobile phones, but Huawei is looking to change that with its newest Mate 70 devices, which run on the company's own HarmonyOS Next.
The launch caps a major turnaround in the fortunes of Huawei, which saw its wings clipped by grueling U.S. sanctions in recent years but has since bounced back with soaring sales.
"Today, the long-awaited Mate 70, the most powerful one ever, is here," Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei's Consumer Business Group, told a raucous launch event at the firm's Shenzhen headquarters.
The risks are high -- unlike a previous iteration, based on Android's open-source code, HarmonyOS Next requires a complete rewiring of all apps on the smartphones it powers.
"HarmonyOS Next is the first home-grown operating system, a milestone for China to move away from reliance on Western technologies for software with performance improvement," Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis, told AFP.
More than three million have been pre-ordered, according to Huawei's online shopping platform, though that does not require them to be purchased.
Zhang Nannan, 28, who switched to a Huawei phone from Apple last year, said Huawei phones take clearer photos and get better signal, while "supporting domestic products" was another draw.
"We must innovate on our own, and cannot let ourselves be disrupted by foreign countries," he said.
Huawei was once China's largest domestic smartphone maker before it became embroiled in a tech war between Washington and Beijing.
The company shipped more than 10.8 million smartphones in the third quarter -- capturing just 16 percent of the Chinese market, according to a recent report by technology research firm Canalys.
In September the firm unveiled the world's first triple-folding phone, the Mate XT, priced at an eye-watering $2,800 which made it three times the cost of the newest iPhone.
The Mate 70 has a much lower starting price of $758.
Those who purchase a Mate 70 smartphone will be given the choice to opt out of the fully self-developed operating system, the firm said.
Yu said that there are "many application updates" taking place on a daily basis.
"We expect that in two or three months, the application user experience of our HarmonyOS ecosystem will be more mature and more perfect," he added.
Huawei found itself at the center of an intense tech rivalry between Beijing and Washington, with U.S. officials warning its equipment could be used to spy on behalf of Chinese authorities -- allegations they deny.
Since 2019, U.S. sanctions have cut Huawei off from global supply chains for technology and U.S.-made components, a move that initially hammered its production of smartphones.
That is only set to intensify under U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised huge tariffs on Chinese imports in response to what he says are Beijing's unfair trade practices.
"Rather than Huawei inspiring the tech industry as a whole, it is the self-reliance trend of the Chinese tech industry that has made Huawei's progress possible," Toby Zhu, a senior analyst at Canalys, told AFP.
The success of Huawei's new generation of smartphone products will be a key gauge of whether that drive has worked, said Zhu.
"This generation of products cannot afford to miss the mark because everyone has high expectations for them," he added.
But it is unclear whether developers overseas will be willing to spend the money needed to build a completely new version of their apps for the latest smartphones, said Rich Bishop, co-founder and CEO of AppInChina, a publisher of international software in China.
One third-party agency in China quoted a price of two million yuan ($275,500) to custom-fit a foreign app for HarmonyOS Next, he told AFP.
To convince them, "Huawei needs to continuously improve the software, provide better support for developers, and convince the developer community that it is committed to the long-term development of the Harmony ecosystem", Paul Triolo, a partner at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge Group, told AFP.
© 2024 AFP
9 Comments
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GBR48
American sanctions are speeding China towards self-reliance in tech - hardware and software. And the US won't have backdoors in Chinese operating systems. Western tech also offered Chinese dissidents access to the outside world. Politicians don't take much notice of critics, but they should have listened to geeks explaining the unintended consequences here. A massive own goal by the US.
Eat the left
WIth no option to turn off the camera or microphone, I heard...
Jay
I'm in - nothing says "trust us" like a CCP-backed device that comes preloaded with spyware, a direct line to Beijing, and a lifetime subscription to censorship updates!
Seriously, why not just mail your private data to the Chinese government yourself and cut out the middleman? But hey, if you're into government overreach and digital surveillance disguised as "innovation," this phone is practically tailor made for you.
dobre vam zajebava
nothing unexpected at all.
Peter14
Plus all the "spying on you" software is absolutely free and fully PRC compliant so the government knows everything you do, say and text.
A big "no thanks" to Chinese tech.
Mr Kipling
Peter14...
You think the CCP is interested in your browsing history? Be careful, it can lead to blindness.. wink.
BertieWooster
GBR48
"A massive home goal for the U.S.A."
That's about right. Trump's sanctions are not going to cause them sleepless nights. They've still got a lot of planet to sell to. Africa, India, the Philippines, etc.
And what's the betting that in a few years time, they overtake iOS and Andrex.
Peter14
CCP is interested in everyones browsing history as evidenced by its total control of the internet in China. Thinking otherwise is only fooling yourself. Be careful, in China it can lead to disappearance or death.. truly.
Sven Asai
Of course only guessing, but it's also probably again only the 847th Unix derivative OS, a slightly changed copy of something long existing elsewhere, since the '70s. When I was young and still behind the Iron curtain, we also worked with 'own developments' of MS-DOS, dBASE or on big mainframe IBM computers. Those were all 99.9% clones from Western technology originals, just with another name like CP/M, Redabas or ESER and a few internal commando strings, character tables or syntaxes renamed.