Huawei CEO, Ren Zhengfei, has said that the company's home-grown mobile operating system (OS) will be faster than both iOS and Android... but it could struggle when it comes to apps.
Zhengfei made the claim during an interview with French magazine Le Point, and the Huawei chief remains bullish about his company's chances in the market, no matter the long-term outcome of the current US-China trade war.
It's no secret that Huawei is working on its own OS, which it could employ on smartphones if the US follows through with its Huawei ban, a ban which would see the Chinese manufacturer lose access to Google's vital Android services such as the Play Store, security updates and suite of Google apps.
While Huawei's HongMeng OS (also known as Ark OS) may run faster than the software found on rival devices, Zhengfei admitted that it may struggle when it comes to apps.
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Mind the app gap
Developing a store big enough to rival Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store is no easy feat, and many firms have failed to match the sheer app volume and big names that frequent the two most well-known smartphone storefronts.
In the past few years we've witnessed Windows Phone and BlackBerry OS try, and fail, to meet the app demands of users used to the variety delivered by Apple and Google, while smaller operating systems have also struggled to match the big players over the years.
Huawei is the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world (after Samsung), which means it has a sizable user base which could be attractive to developers. But convincing them to provide a version of their applications to run specifically on the new operating system could still prove challenging, especially as it's unproven in terms of potential revenue generation.
We're yet to see any sign of the operating system in action, so we currently don't know how it will work, or what it will look like - and there's a chance Huawei won't need to rely on this OS for its smartphones.
In fact, Walter Ji - Huawei's President of Consumer Business Group for Western Europe- told TechRadar that currently there's "no timeline prediction for launching a device" running its own OS.
That doesn't mean the OS won't see the light of day, as Zhengfei said the company's operating system can apparently be used across a variety of devices including tablets, computer routers and data centers, so it could have life beyond phones.
