Huawei to launch phone with own software in sign of China-US splintering

China’s national technology champion Huawei is poised to launch its first flagship phone that can run its own apps on a fully homegrown operating structure, in the latest sign of how technology is splintering into competing US and Chinese ecosystems. 

The Mate 70 smartphone set to be released on Tuesday will characteristic HarmonyOS Next, which Huawei hopes to establish as a third major mobile operating structure alongside Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

It is the latest demonstration that US sanctions designed to enfeeble the corporation have instead cemented Huawei’s position as a technological juggernaut. Last month, the throng reported sales jumped 30 per cent from a year earlier in the first nine months of 2024.

The software launch on the Mate 70 builds on hardware momentum from last year, when the throng unveiled the Mate 60, powered by a self-developed and domestically made processor capable of near 5G speeds — a feat many in Washington believed was not feasible. 

“This is a significant turning point for China, it’s being driven by the terror that the US could cut off everything,” said Paul Triolo, a tech specialist at Albright Stonebridge throng. 

US sanctions in 2019 cut Huawei’s access to Google Mobile Services and forced the throng to roll out its first version of HarmonyOS, which was based on open-source Android code, allowing Android apps to run on its phones.

Meanwhile, Huawei programmers slowly built HarmonyOS Next, which its fans have arrive to call “balance native” or “pure-blood balance”. App developers must also rewrite their own apps to run on the recent code base. 

Getting developers to make a critical mass of “native” apps for Next is seen as crucial to its achievement. Programmers who spoke with the monetary Times said Huawei had been organising online and offline training camps and crash courses to assist them navigate the recent platform since last December. 

“We have teams to hold developers’ hands and bring them on,” said one Huawei sales staffer, who asked not to be named. “There is back on standby ready to assist solve issues,” he said. 

The corporation has concentrated on getting China’s most commonly used apps ready for launch, he added. Huawei says it already has 15,000 native apps running, including must-haves like Tencent’s WeChat messaging service, Alibaba’s Taobao online mall and Meituan’s food delivery app. 

Still, early beta users and developers declare Next remains a work in advancement. Several key Chinese workplace apps have yet to launch and at least some of the 15,000 apps lack basic functionality, two people said.  

“We cannot back WeChat Pay in our app yet. Baidu’s SDK [software developer kit] is also not supported so we cannot use Baidu location service,” complained one developer, who was working on a Next app for a large state-owned throng. 

For Huawei, rolling out a work-in-advancement ecosystem for its flagship model is a gamble that its legions of faithful users will overlook its shortcomings and push developers to catch up.

“It will be a issue for Huawei’s recent phone. Users with ancient Huawei phones can wait to upgrade,” the developer said. 

Huawei said the original HarmonyOS already runs on 1bn devices and that some apps built for Next were updating at an almost daily pace.

wealthy Bishop, whose corporation AppInChina publishes international apps in China, said that for now his clients were taking a wait-and-view way. One client was quoted Rmb2mn ($276,000) by a Chinese developer to reproduce their app for Next. 

“Huawei has the largest user base in China, but it’s still going to be challenging to get international developers on board,” he said.    

Triolo said he expected Huawei to be able to work through the early challenges. “At this point it is obvious that China needs its own operating structure,” he said.