Two years after the first warnings, it turns out that Google may have a serious challenge in its hands as cracks open in the Android ecosystem, changing the rules of the game for millions of users worldwide. .
This week’s headlines (1, 2, 3, 4) warn of a near-life nightmare for Google, with the highest serious risk to date for its globally dominant Android ecosystem. Huawei, blacklisted, is already taking a different address than Android, with its own devices about to transfer to the operating system of your choice. But is this just the beginning of an Android exodus?
That was the threat when Donald Trump chose and repressed Huawei. Never mentioned sensational short-term damage to a single brand, it was a long-term seismic replacement for the industry. In fact, the operational formula would be described as seismic. control of global cellular criteria over Android and iOS would be at stake.
If you need to see why those first signs are so serious for Google, just take a look at the numbers. During the first quarter of this year, Samsung gained a 22% market position percentage, with Apple at 15%. five are Chinese: Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, with 14%, 11% and 10% respectively. Add about 4% of Huawei and RealMe each, and this represents 43% of the global market controlled through the top five Chinese brands.
Specifically, these 4 Chinese brands account for 50% of the global Android market, and although they offer a reduced edition of the operating formula in China, where many of Google’s garage facilities and programs are banned, their exports are now expanding as everyone adopts. . variant of Huawei’s incredibly successful export strategy of the last decade.
Mathematics tell you everything. Annual expansion of China’s top 3 OEMs of 62%, 60% and 48%, respectively, compared to 28% of Samsung.
While Huawei’s dizzying fall has obviously made headlines in recent months, the expansion of other Chinese OEMs has already made up for the difference. There has been no decrease in the percentage of China Inc. ‘s global market. and outperforms the market.
The increase in exports began with Xiaomi, first to recognize and target the percentage of market place that was left vacant after the disappearance of Huawei. But remember, this is not a static group of users: Huawei is developing at frantic speed before the blacklist. marketplaceplace for the least expensive Chinese high-end hardware recipe and yet-to-be-converted features.
The market is basically segmented into Samsung, Apple and “China”, and sales in China are divided between Xiaomi and Oppo, Vivo and RealMe from BBK. Everyone, with the exception of Huawei, continues to use Android, but if you can only transfer the other 4 Chinese OEMs to HarmonyOS over time, then it would be much larger than Android or iOS.
For more than two years, Samsung’s market share has remained strong, while Apple’s has fluctuated from quarter to quarter. Meanwhile, China’s leading OEMs increased from 31% in the first quarter of 2018 to 43% in the last quarter. to boost your growth, the need for a significant percentage of Samsung or Apple’s market.
Xiaomi now says it has outperformed Apple in Europe, with only Samsung to catch up, Huawei’s war cry before Trump’s rising sanctions began to work.
Rumors and hypotheses from China that major OEMs are now comparing HarmonyOS. It also reports that Huawei will adapt HarmonyOS to run on Qualcomm and MediaTek chipsets, extending its reach.
Uninsodly consequences of the blacklist. Huawei’s withdrawal from the equation has given confidence to its national rivals to follow suit: 3 Huawei contenders with the balances and internals needed to press hard and fast. The removal of Huawei’s full Google Android has led the Chinese tech giant to expand. and launch its own ecosystem of global operating systems of choice to compete with Android.
“Developing a smart ecosystem is much more complicated than developing smart technologies,” Huawei’s software manager said at the developer convention in September, when the company showed harmonyOS would be available to other OEMs. “I hope that developers and partners can sign up for us at this historic moment. In this way, a Chinese ecosystem can be sustainable and extremely rich. Today we are taking the first step. “
As I warned in 2019, the biggest threat has been that China’s tech giants will work together, perhaps with a state boost, to adopt a chosen operational formula and eco-formula, to provide a viable option for Apple’s iOS and Google. choice of U. S. -controlled technology.
“The world is looking for a new open system,” Huawei President Guo Ping said brazenly last year. “And since Huawei has helped Android succeed, why not succeed with our own system?It’s believable to have two systems in a world. And Huawei will be able to take the lead even in an incredibly hostile environment. “
“The value to Huawei, if you can, to accomplish this feat,” he had warned her a year earlier, “is enormous. Make no mistake, you have each and every possibility to use other Chinese brands with it. Huawei said the time had come for an option for classic Android and iOS, and if Huawei can this ‘third way’, then it can build its own ecosystem and infrastructure, it can license its software and sell its hardware. “
At the time, the US and its allies in the Middle East have been able to do so But it’s not the first time It had not guillotined Huawei’s silicon source chain, so Huawei remained a viable hardware supplier; I just needed an operating system. Now he has lost so much floor in front of the hardware and his rivals have won so much, that his ecosystem of software and developers is his bet to regain his leading position in the market.
This scenario has been exacerbated by Huawei’s decline in home sales. It is highly unlikely that you will overesrity the effect this will have on Huawei: your domestic sales have backed your balance sheet thanks to the blacklist. annualized sales in China during the first quarter fell by 50%.
Time is everything, and the hypothesis is intensifying now. And remember, this is China. No take a 12-month view. Consider a five-year view. Even a 10-year view.
This week, a new video posted on YouTube and seems to show Huawei’s HarmonyOS on a Xiaomi smartphone. Xiaomi told me he didn’t comment on “speculations. ” Huawei didn’t comment either, but it reminded me that “HarmonyOS is open to other smartphones. “manufacturers. ” Google rejected the reports.
But rumors have begun, and substitution makes sense when geopolitical context like the East is fighting the West. While Europe would possibly take some time to convert, markets such as India, South America and Southeast Asia will be much easier. Markets that adopt inexpensive phones are even easier.
“OPPO, Xiaomi and Vivo can soon transfer from Android to Huawei’s Harmony operating system,” said Mashable India, who presents a blogger’s report suggesting that “surprises” were imminent and that “the Android-era model is the future. “
As to whether we can take those reports seriously, keep in mind that attracting major Chinese smartphone brands is precisely what Huawei imagined when it took the resolution to expand Harmony as an open source operating system. – How else do you bring your software to market?
Let’s be realistic. This is not a short-term threat. HarmonyOS is not a viable transfer for the maximum number of Android users in major key markets. Again. But give it a few more years, that those Chinese brands may have gained an even higher percentage of the Android market, and it will probably become another proposition.
The real nightmare for Google is that it didn’t have to happen. Huawei became fully committed to Android before the blacklist, a risk to Samsung but not to Google. For a year or more after the sanctions were imposed, Huawei executives rushed to say yes. I would return to Android if they had the chance, but a lot of water has passed under the geopolitical bridge ever since, and Huawei is another company.
Whatever happens, it’s transparent that the Android landscape is changing, which will have an effect on app users and developers around the world. lead to a serious replacement in android homogeneity.
Last year, Huawei’s president warned that boosting his choice of Android would be “a protracted war that is meant to win in the finishArray. Whatever the height of the mountain, dig an inch or less, persist and fight for a long time. , we will succeed.
Whatever it means, it’s already started.
Zak is a widely identified expert in surveillance and cyberspace, as well as security and privacy hazards related to primary technologies, social media, IoT and smartphones.
Zak is a widely identified expert in surveillance and cyberspace, as well as security and privacy hazards related to primary technologies, social media, IoT and smartphone platforms. He is quoted in foreign media and regularly comments on television news, with appearances on the BBC. Sky, NPR, NBC, Channel 4, TF1, ITV and Fox, as well as various documentaries about cybersecurity and surveillance.
Zak has twenty years of delight in cybersecurity and real global surveillance, recently as founder/CEO of Digital Barriers, which develops complex surveillance technologies for frontline security and defense agencies, as well as for commercial organizations in the United States and Europe. and Asia. La company is at the forefront of artificial intelligence-based surveillance and works heavily with leading government agencies around the world in the proper and proportionate use of such technologies.
Zak can be contacted at zakd@me. com.