Huawei Technologies has finally established its own ecosystem, Huawei Mobile Service (HMS) to replace Google Mobile Services in a fresh step towards launching it HarmonyOS to beat Android.
This comes after Huawei was banned from the US and from any association with US companies, which Google is, forcing them to create their own operating system (HarmonyOS) and therefore create a backing ecosystem to service the OS.
Huawei Chairman Guo Ping was reported by Forbes as telling employees of Huawei that “The world has been suffering for a long time,” referring to the lock Google has on the Android ecosystem, which hold almost 75% of the OS market globally.
It would be recalled that stemming from the 5G control battle between US and China in particular, US President Donald Trump has banned all Huawei and ZTE activities in the US and has asked all US companies which have dealings with Huawei and ZTE to cancel them as part of moves to get the Chinese tech giants out of the US for good.
President Trump’s latest salvo on Huawei in particular is cutting them access to the chipsets powering its flagship smartphones.
Huawei Chairman Guo admitted the new sanctions would “cause certain difficulties… especially for high-end mobile phones,” but assured employees that “I believe we can solve them.”
He said the loss of Google from those mobile phones will be a challenge and he would have wished things just return to normal with Huawei phones just running on Android, but they have been forced to get an alternative, which has been in the works since last year.
Even though the HarmonyOS has been ready and can run across phones and other smart devices, the bigger challenge was to replace Google Mobile Services with Huawei Mobile Services and that is ready now.
Huawei now has 600 million users on its ecosystem across the world, and this is a change that will impact all of those who stay with the brand.
“The world is also looking forward to a new open system,” Guo said. “And since Huawei helped Android to succeed, why not make our own system successful?” he asked employees.
He described HMS as “bigger, brighter and bolder,” but the timing of its full HarmonyOS deployment, backed by the HMS on a smartphone remains unclear. Reports that this would happen by the end of this calendar year, perhaps as soon as with the launch of the imminent Mate 40, have been denied.
Guo acknowledged that rolling out HMS will be a herculean task for Huawei from the beginning but “no matter how high the mountain we will persist and fight for a long time – we will definitely succeed.”
Huawei is also reported to have said they have enough custom chipsets for just the launch of the Mate 40, which is likely to run out early next year, and that is a challenge because the company has no Plan-B, as Trump has cut access to third-party alternatives.
Guo Ping however said Huawei will invest heavily in HiSilicon to overcome the impact of the U.S. ban, albeit that will take time. “HiSilicon will grow stronger in several years,” he said,
He is confident that the situation U.S. had created, would ultimately work in Huawei’s favour, as long as everyone seized upon it.
Guo described the company’s decision to launch HMS as “brave,” and that “it was not an easy decision for us, as a smartphone company, to develop our own Huawei Mobile Services ecosystem. It’s very difficult and very challenging. But we delivered a better-than-expected script for the first year.”
Meanwhile, China’s state-controlled Global Times, reported Guo as saying “cultivating HMS is a protracted war that Huawei is destined to win in the end,” telling his audience (and Google) that “it’s plausible to have two systems in a world. And Huawei will be able to survive and take the lead even in an extremely hostile environment.”
