Huawei launches ‘milestone’ smartphone with homegrown operating system

Chinese tech giant Huawei will launch its first smartphone equipped with a fully proprietary operating system on Tuesday, a key test in the company’s battle 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 latest Mate 70 devices, which run the company’s own HarmonyOS Next.

The launch marks a major turnaround in the fortunes of Huawei, which saw its wings shrunk in recent years due to grueling US sanctions but has since recovered with rising sales.

“The search for a viable, scalable mobile operating system that is largely free from control by Western companies has been a long time coming in China,” Paul Triolo, Partner for China and Technology Policy Lead at consultancy Albright Stonebridge Group, told AFP.

But the new smartphone – also powered by an advanced, domestically produced chip – shows that Chinese tech companies can “persevere,” he said.

The Mate 70 will be unveiled at a company launch event at its Shenzhen headquarters on Tuesday afternoon.

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According to Huawei’s online shopping platform, more than three million have been pre-ordered, but they do not require purchase.

The risks are high: unlike an earlier version based on Android’s open-source code, HarmonyOS Next requires a complete rewiring of all apps on the smartphones it supports.

“HarmonyOS Next is the first homegrown operating system, a milestone for China to move away from dependence on Western technologies for performance-boosting software,” Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis, told AFP.

But “while Chinese companies may be willing to allocate resources to contribute to Huawei’s ecosystem, there are challenges as to whether HarmonyOS Next can provide the same number of apps and functionalities to global consumers,” Ng said.

‘High expectations’

Huawei has found itself at the center of an intense tech rivalry between Beijing and Washington, with US officials warning that its equipment could be used to spy on behalf of Chinese authorities – charges they deny.

Since 2019, US sanctions have cut Huawei off from global supply chains for technology and US-made components, a move that initially put severe pressure on smartphone production.

That fight will only intensify under the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, who has promised massive tariffs on Chinese imports in response to what he says are Beijing’s unfair trade practices.

“Rather than Huawei inspiring the technology industry as a whole, it is the self-reliance trend of China’s technology industry that has enabled Huawei’s progress,” Toby Zhu, a senior analyst at technology research firm Canalys, told AFP.

The success of Huawei’s next generation of smartphone products will be a key indicator of whether that drive has worked, Zhu said.

“This generation of products cannot afford to miss the mark because everyone has high expectations for them,” he added.

Huawei was once China’s largest domestic smartphone maker before becoming embroiled in a technology war between Washington and Beijing.

The company shipped more than 10.8 million smartphone units in the third quarter, capturing just 16 percent of the Chinese market, according to a recent Canalys report.

And it’s unclear whether developers abroad will be willing to spend the money needed to build a completely new version of their apps for the latest smartphones, Rich Bishop, co-founder and CEO of AppInChina, a publisher of international software in China, to AFP.

A third-party agency in China quoted a price of two million yuan ($371,350) to create a foreign custom app for HarmonyOS Next, he said.

To convince them, “Huawei must continuously improve the software, provide better support to developers and convince the developer community that they are committed to the long-term development of the Harmony ecosystem,” Triolo said. AFP