Asian shops shun Huawei phone trade-ins on Google suspension worries | Hacker News Reader

Asian shops shun Huawei phone trade-ins on Google suspension worries

reuters.com

47 pointsRmDen47 comments

Meanwhile, the EU is trying to somewhat cut off Google's monopoly on Android, by telling them they can't force manufacturers to use their software. Now, people in Asia are complaining that they can't access Google's stuff.

It seems like a bit off that Huawei, which, IIRC, was part of that group of companies that was complaining about Google's monopoly, doesn't have a good replacement for Google's services.

one thing just exacerbates the other. why do you think they should have had an alternative ready if they did fall (like us all) for google's empty promises of an open system?

case in point f-droid: open source playStore alternative. go see how many confirmations and special settings you have to figure out to be able to use.

another: mozilla location services and UnifiedNlp. two full replacement for google location via wifi. google completely broke the hability to use it deliberately and for no good technical reason (it is trivial if you have root. literally just change one setting that was only added to block the existing feature of setting a new location backend provider)

The problem is that the play store is a monopoly. If neither Amazon nor Samsung can create an app store with even a small fraction of the total useful apps found on the play store, who can? And if you can't find one particular app on the Amazon/Samsung store, why bother at all?

They can create an app store on Android. Nobody is stopping them.

The same can't be said for ios

Huawei could make a UI toolkit similar to iOS, and use the Swift open source project, and encourage developers to port their iOS apps.

This seems like an expensive risky overkill to trust Apple, when JavaScript solutions work on every platform.

They can create an Android Store. But many apps depends on Google APIs or applications (Maps, Drive, Contacts, etc) and will require changes.

Times change. Why build an app and have an app store if you can do it with a PWA?

There is only one 'killer app' on my phone - WhatsApp. I need my phone to access that through a PC and therefore need the app.

Years ago I had a lot more apps, nowadays I am 'meh' and never visit the Play Store. Anecdotal, but, as mentioned, PWA has arrived and that means that an app store is not strictly needed like how it was before HTML5 arrived.

Google App Store is not a monopoly. You can build Android-based OS with your own store. Google spend some resources attracting developers. Huawei can do the same. May be even attract some exclusive software.

you didn't RC. Huawei is still praising Google and Android even after the ban.

re EU and Asia's different stance on this, that's exactly what monopoly is. EU is getting ahead of the game and IMO making the right move. Rest of the world needs to join, close the legal loopholes of monopoly and do something to protect user privacy.

> Meanwhile, the EU is trying to somewhat cut off Google's monopoly on Android, by telling them they can't force manufacturers to use their software. Now, people in Asia are complaining that they can't access Google's stuff.

These don't seem that...opposite to me. They both fundamentally are the same complaint: there is a lack of _choice_ to be had.

Yes, they are attacking different sides of that lack of choice in different regions, but they're both fundamentally saying we should have the option, but not be required to do this thing.

But it's also not Google's fault if there's no option. It's hard to get a new mobile OS to gain traction. Microsoft tried. Samsung tried. Firefox is trying. Even Huawei has been developing a Plan B for a few years apparently. If none of these guys succeed, how is that Google's fault? Google isn't doing what Microsoft did with IE against Netscape. Companies are free to install other operating systems on their phones or make their own operating systems. Momentum is hard to shift, is Google the villain for winning?

Yeah I can't seem to wrap my head around people blaming Google for making products that other people can't improve on.

>> I can't seem to wrap my head around people blaming [Comcast] for building [services] that other people can't improve on

Or that again but replace with Microsoft and IE6 (in its heyday) and you'll realize what that "can't improve on" actually means.

Other OSes can't compete because they lack the push to critical mass needed to build a solid app ecosystem, not because they are inherently inferior. It's a vicious circle where you need apps to get big and need to be big to get apps. If on top of that Google piles on the requirement that any manufacturer is either with or against Google, so they have to swear off any other OS in order to have access to Google services, you get some really insurmountable odds.

I think there's a difference between: saying "Google makes products that people are unable to improve upon" and saying that Google "can't force manufacturers to use their software".

Those just seem...like totally different statements to me. Yes, Google has done an amazing job building a great software platform. No, despite the fact that Google is the best, they are not allowed to use that market dominance to assert undue control over the rest of the ecosystem.

I guess I just don't see anyone blaming Google for making amazing products. People were blaming Google for using the immense leverage that their near-monopoly position put them in (because they made amazing products).

Firefox OS is discontinued as well. And there is more Blackberry tried, Nokia (MeeGo) tried, Ubuntu tried. Samsung still tries with Tizen btw.

> But it's also not Google's fault if there's no option.

I'm still shocked Microsoft couldn't get its act together and stick it out with their mobile platform. One of the main things which absolutely killed their platform was how they handled their app store. Had they managed it better by making it easier to build apps for their platform like Android has, they would've been able to stick around longer.

Shame really and makes other players hesitant to come into an industry when you have a behemoth like Microsoft fail so badly.

December 10th of this year was their sunset date for support.

It's been a long time since I did development for Android, and a ling time since I made an app for Windows Mobile, so this is a bit outdated-

In my experience, it was actually easier to develop for Windows Mobile than it was for Android, because on Android you had to update constantly just to retain the features that you had. Windows Mobile, especially for someone who's worked with UWP previously, was much easier to work with.

I too wish that Microsoft hadn't sunset it so quickly.

Omg, I so agree on this. I just did a project in flutter to test out out.

And some build vs compile bug for androidX kept popping up. Urgh.

Untill I removed a package that was added together with 4 others...

It did got a lot faster to emulate and hot loading is awesome as well. But MS development ( c#) is a massive pro versus Java/kotlin.

It's unclear any decision they made mattered at all. Building a Windows mobile app made no real sense and even the largest app developers had trouble justifying the investment. Also, I don't think Microsoft stood to gain all that much even if they were able to gain a foothold in the market.

I'm not sure what it is that you think Microsoft did with IE but Google is doing pretty much the same, in the sense that their app ecosystem is all-or-nothing. And even worse in the sense that it's tied to the cloud account - back then, you didn't need a Microsoft account to use Windows.

> is Google the villain for winning?

No, Google is the villain for abusing their Android monopoly, not for having one.

Manufacturers (like Russian Yandex) cannot use Google Play Services / store infrastructure and replace Google's Apps with their own. It's either all-in, or full China mode.

Can the user not simply erase OEM and load the stock Android OS and use the phone just as effectively (fully)?

If the bootloader were unlocked and the devices well supported by lineage etc, sure. Sadly that's not the case. I'd love for Huawei to do that though. Focus on making great hardware, and make sure that aosp/postmarketOS etc work by default.

Try actually selling that to an entire market.

It hasn’t caught on. It might be that it hasn’t caught on yet, or it might be that it will never catch on.

Or customers in these markets can simply disregard Huawei entirely, and buy something from a company that isn’t blacklisted by the US Government. $5 that most people would rather do that than install their own operating system.

i imagine no. google services and maybe all apps can get some hw id that tells them it's huawei. maybe a custom android built that lies about this. but then google might build more checks and so on

Thanks for this. Wow, this is incredible. What waste of perfectly-paid-for hardware. :-(

There's no stock Android OS.

Some Huawei phones in Asian markets were sold without gapps for many years.

Singapore and Philippines aren't exactly Mainland China...

I saw google free Huawei phones in quite a number of places other than China

Till recently Huawei phones bootloaders could be easily be unlocked. If they still are people now can get a cheap phone and install lineage or other os

Would running LineageOS on one of these circumvent the concerns about Huawei? Or are people worried they're compromised at the driver or firmware level?

If you don't trust Huawei as a manufacturer, then logically you wouldn't trust them on the lower-level stuff anymore than the software layer.

I've heard that many (most?) recent Huawei phones bootloaders are not unlockable by design, so it's kind of hard to flash LOS on them.

Even if Huawei would let you unlock the bootloader properly, using LineageOS on an unauthorized device (such as upcoming Huawei devices) would be a pain. Google recently started requiring you to register a device with your account for every unauthorized device running Play Services (that is, a device that didn't get certified; certified devices running custom ROMs don't have this limitation) and apps might not show up. Netflix is not available for rooted devices, for example, and probably won't be on uncertified devices either.

I don't think it's the people who are worried about Huawei though; this whole thing reeks of US government power play, trying to protect US businesses over the backs of consumers.

> Netflix is not available for rooted devices, for example, and probably won't be on uncertified devices either.

Note that you can use Magisk to get around the Play store not showing apps like this, but it's definitely not a solution for everyone.

The concerns of the people in the article isn't that Huawei is spying on them, its the uncertainty over how long they can keep using Google apps and Play services on the phone. While it's certainly possible to live a 'Google free' existence on and Android device, it's not something most Android users (certainly outside of China) are interested in.

They should ship them to China, where they are still selling like hot cakes.

Since they were shipped out of China in the first place, it means either the market is already saturated or margins there are worse.

They were shipped out of China prior to Trump's ban on Huawei. The decline in perceived value occurred after. There was no such decline in China.

You can’t use those USA app in china. Use chinese app ?

This talks about other asian countries that dont use chinese alternatives.

Trump administration really showed the world how software can be weaponized against another country when there's trade dispute. EU better start growing their own internet/software ecosystem too.

This is unrelated to the trade war. There are security concerns with Huawei products because the company has deep connections to the Chinese government.

As do all companies based in China. Huawei has long been suspected of doing a lot of network espionage work for the Chinese government - as are Chinese social networks, chat apps, mail apps, etc - but we also know for sure that Silicon Valley's Big Tech are heavily infiltrated by the NSA.

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