Huawei confirms that it has built its own proprietary mobile OS...just in case

Huawei's battles with the US government are well-documented. The company, back in 2017, planned on introducing its smartphones to the US market but was thwarted by the US government—effectively ending the planned partnership with AT&T. Since then, it’s been loss after loss for the Chinese company, with a number of countries expressing their lack of trust in Huawei’s network infrastructure.

While most of the focus until now has been on the company’s network division, as opposed to its smartphone business, Huawei understands that things could easily go sour across the board. The company has prepared for that, though, and has now confirmed the existence of its own mobile OS.

“We have prepared our own operating system,” Huawei CEO Richard is reported to have said in an interview. “If it turns out we can no longer use these systems, we will be ready and have our plan B.”

“Huawei does have backup systems but only for use in extenuating circumstances," a company spokesperson was quoted as saying in an interview on Thursday. " We don't expect to use them, and to be honest, we don't want to use them. We fully support our partners' operating systems – we love using them and our customers love using them. Android and Windows will always remain our first choices.”

That hypothetical scenario is not without precedence either. Just last year, the US placed a trade ban on ZTE that ensured the Chinese company couldn’t do business with any American companies. That, of course, meant that ZTE couldn’t use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoCs, and couldn’t collaborate with Google on the software end. As a result, ZTE’s smartphone business was put out of commission for almost six months.

While Huawei already makes its own SoCs, it still believes that complete autonomy would be better in the event of such a ban. How viable a proprietary OS would be is a completely different question of its own, though. Samsung and Microsoft both have their own mobile OS’s: Tizen and Windows Mobile, but Android and iOS still have complete dominance over the market.  In any case, the company has the right idea. It is better to be prepared for the worst after all.