The article doesn't mention but it seems pretty relevant, Google kicked them from having the Play store etc on their phones a little while back as a result of political pressure so there's really no reason for them to care about Android any more.
A lot of Huawei gear is still installed and operating, as of today, in US telecom networks.
Even the pentagon is contracting with many companies using Huawei gear.
The telecom providers arguably put quite some pressure to maintain such a distinction, since they purchased and paid for said equipment.
But for i.e. Google it would have been a crime to provide dedicated technology access (early-access code, Google Services, etc.) for Huawei to then integrate into their products.
There were specific orders to remove Huawei from the telecom network (but yeah they were not followed) in 2019.
So the government didn't flip a switch and tell them to make it disappear. They expected it to be a staggered, eventual process.
it also forces some redundancy into the mechanisms of running a technological world - a disaster that affects one of the two or three polities may well leave enough stuff working that civilisation doesn't need to collapse completely.
a world where everything depends on everything else working correctly is a bit more fragile than I would like.
I don’t see any problems here
1. After China made a turn toward authoritarianism with Xi, decoupling - especially on the telecom side - is a hard requirement. They are objectively a huge national security risk. 2. Competition is healthy. I don’t see any problems with having another space race or another OS competing on the international arena. 3. I’m not too worried about China threatening USA in the long run anyway. USA still attracts the best talent from all over the world, many of which end up settling there long term. (I’m not American, so saying this as an outsider). You cannot become a citizen in China, and that’s unlikely to change in an ultra-nationalist authoritarian leadership. There’s so many factors (ultra-nationalism, changing demographics, less foreign investments, capital flight, overhead of doing everything themselves) that is slowly eroding Chinas economy.
I see this as likely in the same vein as Google copying the Java APIs. The similarity is important because of the compatibility it brings.
So there's very much still an incentive to care about what Android does, and what API interfaces it exposes (at least in the transitional period).
Whether that will still be true a decade or two from now is a different question.
Depending on the country that's going to be some mobile payment options, banking apps, social media or government ID. If even one of those are missing, people will pick another brand, something with the Play Store.
But I think it's a mistake to assume that the Play Store is equivalent to your developer footprint for a platform.
Google has been fairly insidious about integrating OS level APIs with the Play Store, so that's blurred the line a bit here - but if the OS is otherwise "Android-like" enough that it's just a matter of choosing a different target in your build and linking to different binaries... it'll be very easy to port over the developer base that's interested.
Seems like Harmony is doing exactly that, and already has a large swath of companies that are planning to support the OS - so while some of that is likely because of government influence in this case... it's not required (ex - I'm thinking of Google and the whole lawsuit with Oracle around the Java APIs)
Huawei had a 4% market share last year. Is that going to be enough for something like MobilePay in Scandinavia to ensure that they are present on a platform, from a company and country they don't entirely trust? Without the MobilePay app, the number of people who'd buy the phones drop to almost zero. The same happens if Danes can't use their government ID on the phones, sales drops to almost zero, because the device just lost a major feature.
I don't think it matters that Huawei has a large swath of companies ready to support their OS, it has to be all of them (or at least the right ones).
They might pull it off and get every one on board, but the investment has to be really small to justify the work for such a small user base.
Countries like Iran, Russia can be next target for obvious reasons.
In SEA likes of Grab and Gojek can be financially motivated to create apps. If they get a 4-10% marketshare it will make sense for Meta to port its apps to protect its position.
YouTube will be a blocker as Google has strong reason to not support any alternative platform even if it will make sense for the App. Same happened for Win Phone earlier.
I just looked up WeChat and Douyin, for example, and they are working on HarmonyOS versions: [0].
0. https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3267411/huaweis-h...