PRODUCTS 
Home
+86 15914181765
chapman@cbteck.com
+8615914181765
Huawei needs its Android rival to succeed where Samsung and Microsoft failed
Date：2019/03/19 Click：1047 times
Huawei has a plan B to help protect its global smartphone businessfrom the US-China trade war. But it's incredibly risky.
The Chinese company recently unveiled its own operating system, called Harmony. The software can in theory be used to replace Google's Android in Huawei's smartphones and other devices should the United States continue to prevent the two companies from working together.
Rolling out a new operating system is pretty easy, especially for a big tech firm like Huawei. The tech giant employs more than 180,000 people and has the resources and the infrastructure to build software. But the big challenge is getting developers to build apps for a new system.
App designers want their products on platforms that have a lot users. And for years, the market has been dominated by two systems: Google's (GOOGL) Android and Apple's (APPL) iOS.
If Huawei fails to win over developers of apps like Uber (UBER) or Instagram — or even regular banking and airline services — it will be a lot harder to persuade people to buy phones powered by Harmony.
"Huawei understands this point," said Kiranjeet Kaur, an analyst with research firm IDC. "Without apps, no one is going to buy [their phones]."
The company acknowledged that the success of Harmony "will depend on a dynamic ecosystem of apps and developers."
"To encourage broader adoption, Huawei will release HarmonyOS as an open-source platform, worldwide," Huawei said in a statement. "Huawei will also establish an open-source foundation and an open-source community to support more in-depth collaboration with developers."
The omens aren't great. Other major tech companies that have released open-source operating systems to compete with Android and iOS and have failed to attract enough people and developers.
Microsoft (MSFT) famously had too few apps when it launched its Windows mobile operating system several years ago — and the ones that it had were often not as good as rival apps. The company eventually killed the platform. Blackberry (BB) also tried and failed to launch its own system.
A system with fewer users is less appealing, since there are fewer opportunities to make money.
"From the developers' point of view, the ease of bringing their apps and services to the end users, and how quickly they can monetize their work, is very important," said Jason Low, an analyst with research firm Canalys.
Even Samsung, which makes more smartphones than anyone else, has struggled to gain traction with its own operating system — Tizen.
The first Tizen phone launched in India in 2015 for less than $100, and Samsung managed to sell about a million of them. But the phone received poor reviews and was criticized for being a bad Android clone and having too few apps. Samsung hasn't released a new Tizen smartphonefor more than two years, and the operating system is now mostly used on the company's smart watches and TVs.