On May 19, 2019, Google announced that it had banned Huawei. The company couldn’t continue to offer Google services and apps on its future phones, which left many of us thinking the same thing.

Huawei looked doomed.

The veto, part of a series of measures taken in the trade war between the US and China, was a missile to the mobile business’s waterline. At the time, Huawei was about to overtake Apple and Samsung in global smartphone sales, but this blow seemed fatal.

Sales fell even in its home country of China. There were several escape routes, but the company did not give up and gradually took steps that led to spectacular success. Huawei was reborn from the ashesand it did so by overcoming a Western veto that made the future of its mobile business extremely complicated.

There was one important factor in his favor: China. The Asian giant has become the absolute focal point of Huawei’s smartphone business, and the government’s support has been combined with remarkable strategic decisions that have always aimed at the same thing: relying solely on themselves.

This strategy reminds me of AppleIt is a company that has demonstrated its passion for full control of its products in both software and hardware fields in recent years. The Cupertino company eliminates external dependencies on its mobile phones and computers, allowing it to maintain a certain level of absolute control over its ecosystem.

We’ll never meet again, Android

Huawei seems to be approaching the same milestone, and one of the keys to this was the launch of HarmonyOS NEXT. This operating system is an evolution of HarmonyOS, which in pre-release versions is still based on AOSP, the publicly available Open Source version of Android, but does not include Google services and apps (including Gmail, YouTube, Maps, or Google Maps). Play Store).

The new Huawei Mate 70 is a promising bet, and not only in terms of hardware: they are the first models prepared for use with HarmonyOS NEXT.

But HarmonyOS NEXT is an operating system built from scratchIt is 100% their own and it will be adopted by the entire ecosystem of Huawei devices. There are not only mobile phones, but also tablets, smart watches and even headphones.

HarmonyOS Next is not compatible with Android apps. Instead, it uses executables compiled specifically for that platform, which also rely on a service called Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). The number of applications is currently very small (15,000) but if all goes as it seems, this number will increase rapidly in the coming months.

This will be helped by the fact that there is a lot of China. The Asian giant seems to have welcomed this renewed Huawei with open arms, and in just one year its market share in this country increased from 4% to 17%. It even surpassed Apple.

Strong demand for their devices is likely to drive developers too. switch to new operating systemIt will be interesting to see whether Western software services and companies will finally give in and release their products for HarmonyOS NEXT and its ecosystem. The first terminals prepared to use this operating system were recently released: the Huawei Mate 70 and Mate X6 folding devices created great expectations.

Neither Microsoft nor Samsung succeeded

Huawei has managed to do something that no other company has achieved in recent years. The Apple-Google duo of the mobility industry has managed to dominate this market, but it is also true that there have been attempts to change some things in the past.

There are several examples, but the most notable are definitely Microsoft with Windows Phone and Samsung with Tizen. Eventually they both threw in the towel.but others such as Ubuntu, Sailfish or Firefox OS have done the same. Their attempts to suggest options were always remarkable, but they always hit the same wall: the inertia of iOS and Android was too strong.

Neither Microsoft nor Samsung nor others actually offered anything better, and the maturity of these ecosystems caused both users and developers to create a vicious circle: Apps were on Android and iOS because the users were there, and vice versa. It was very difficult to compete with this situation.

However, this inertia is not present in HarmonyOS NEXT. Google took it upon itself with a veto. It is true that many manufacturers in China continue to invest in Android terminals, but Huawei’s success offers a unique future for the world of mobility, especially there.

It is not known whether Huawei will try to exceed its limits with this operating system, but it is definitely a reasonable move. Currently they continue to base their terminals (even modern ones) on EMUI, but it will be interesting to see what the company decides on this matter.

In the meantime, one thing is clear: the launch of HarmonyOS NEXT marks a turning point in the mobility segment. It already does this in China; We’ll see if it does the same in the rest of the world.

in Xataka | Microsoft lost the mobile war. It’s time to reboot Windows Phone with AI