Huawei Wants To Take HarmonyOS Global And Is Aiming For A Podium Finish
It’s been quite a while since Huawei released HarmonyOS in response to the company’s inability to continue to use Google services. To be honest, it was a rather ballsy (and likely very expensive) move, but in China alone, things have seemed to work out very well for Huawei.
As a result, Xu Zhijun, the company’s chairman, has stated plans to take its OS to see the rest of the world. In fact, the company’s goals are extremely lofty, as they plan to take the third spot as a global OS, behind Android and iOS (though to be honest, that might not be exceedingly hard as Samsung’s Tizen only scratches the third spot with a measly 0.37%).
This move seems to be based on the success that HarmonyOS has had in China and it may very soon take over the second spot over iOS in China, according to GSMArena. However, as much as I like Huawei, I believe that taking over China with the Google service-less HarmonyOS isn’t necessarily a measure of success, considering China has gotten used to not having Google services, but the West isn’t.
Anyway, breaking out as a new OS isn’t impossible, but in a time when Android and iOS have been in dominance for about 15 years now, it’s not going to be easy to usurp either of them. However, taking the throne is, smartly, not Huawei’s plan. They’ve identified 5,000 applications in China that are used by 99% of users and plan to focus on adapting those ones to HarmonyOS NEXT first.
I Won’t Be Holding My Breath, As Much As I Like Huawei
I wanted a Huawei P30 Pro so bad about a year after it came out, but at that point, Huawei’s status with the United States was already in question and I chose not to use a phone that would potentially have support abandoned. Since that point, my interest in Huawei devices slowly waned, regardless of how impressive I found them.
The thing is, even if HarmonyOS is built from the ground up and the Chinese company can bring on several popular app developers, a lack of Google services is always going to be a major handicap for them. It’s hard to find third-party applications that can rival the usefulness of Google Maps, Search, YouTube, Play Store, and so on.
I personally don’t believe Huawei will be able to build something so exceptional that it’d convince me to leave the convenience of Android and Google behind, but at the same time, I’m wishing them luck toward that third spot they want to hit.
