Samsung tried to hedge for this by building Tizen(Bada) and realized how much needed to be invested to get an Android competitor going, so they kept the development going, but focused for their Smartwatches, as this would have to be a "if the worst happens" plan, not something that could be a profitable venture.
LG has the Palm/HP borne WebOS for their TVs, i suspect with a similar idea at the back of their minds.
Everyone else? They're too small to realistically try to save their smartphone businesses when the green robot becomes their enemy.
Google bought this platform with every dollar invested over more than a decade, they didn't do this only so that Apple had a competitor, but so that THEY had control over mobile eyeballs.
It’s possible that Google cutting off Huawei will actually backfire, because it makes having a viable alternative to Android a MUST HAVE instead of just NICE TO HAVE.
Perhaps it’s possible to resurrect Blackberry 10 ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_10 ) for example, which seemed to be an impressive piece of engineering that got trampled by Blackberrys failing business. I played with a demo once that could run Android apps and was amazing at multi-tasking thanks to its microkernel architecture. Plus would be governed by Canadian export laws I guess. Perhaps I’m just daydreaming though.
Either way think it’s going to lead to more mobile OS competition again, which is a good thing
BB10 is based on QNX platform, I strongly doubt that QNX is independent from any US assets, patents, licenses, so moving from Android to BB10 is just "more of the same"
Really? Do you think Samsung and LG would be more likely to develop not to mention support an Android competitor? This ban is the best thing that happened to Korean mobile phone manufacturers for years. Huawei was breathing down Sammy’s neck things are looking much bright for them now.
Not really. The situation is much more opening the space for OTHER Chinese vendors to jump in and grab the market. Samsung is already selling in all channels where Huawei is, so they have their shelf-space allocated already. That slot will not remain vacant. LG can surely grab a bit more business in short-term for sales-channels they were not selling to, because even if they are not in a specific channel, they have products ready and tested for the market to fill the gap immediately. TCL/Alcatel has maybe some opportunities in low-price device-tier as well, because they have established relationships with many carriers and retailers.
On the other hand, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Xiaomi are all not sanctioned by US, all of them offer comparable products with a very similar price and aggressively try to expand their international presence.
So I expect mainly a Oppo/Vivo/OnePlus vs. Xiaomi vs. TCL/Alcatel fight for every slot Huawei is at risk to lose...
Google has spent the last decade cutting apart the open part of Android and making it more and more proprietary.
Launcher, Phone app, Messages, Contacts, Calendar. All proprietary.
Notification API, Location API, SMS APIs and step counter APIs, and even the new app format. All proprietary.
It's a huge undertaking building an app for Android today without using Google's services, and sometimes even impossible.
If you want to verify a user by sending a code through SMS (think Whatsapp sign-up) you either have to use the proprietary API, or you'll be banned from the play store. Using the open source API instead gets you banned because it allows you to read all SMS — and Google never cared to build a new open source API because they already have their proprietary API anyway.
And nowadays you don't have APKs anymore but often app bundles, a special format which only the Play Store can parse.
And if you create a new app today, per default you don't even get the signing key to publish APKs yourself, but only Google gets to keep it.
> It's a huge undertaking building an app for Android today without using Google's services, and sometimes even impossible.
F-Droid developers manage to do it. Sure, they might not publish their apps on the Google-Play Store (some do, actually) but so what? Any Android user can freely download these entirely open apps and install them on their own, by pre-checking a box in the phone settings. That's still more than you can say about iOS!
The OS is open source, Google Play Services isn't.
When you are developing Android apps, you can leverage Google Play Services for all sorts of functionality, such as push notifications and maps, and I would say more apps do use these than don't.
Huawei can still put Android on their phones, but not with Google Play Services. This means that many Android apps just won't work. They also can't supply the Google Play Store, which means that they need an alternate way to distribute apps.
Google Play can be rewritten from scratch to look like the real one and point to open source repositories, but the real hassle are device drivers: they're tight closed to the point there's not a single person in the world who managed to install a 100% open OS on a phone or tablet; even Purism themselves had to use some closed blobs here and there. Closed firmware/blobs/drivers are the #1 problem; that's the battle to send more troops to, not play stores or apps. The day we eradicate them from devices is the day we can consider those devices really open and trustworthy, the day no entity in the world, not even the original manufacturers, can suddenly decide to make a device obsolete forcing the user to buy a new one.
The play store is not the sole way to distribute apps. You can download the .apk files, or get them by mail, or use another play store that has the same apps. The play store is just a repository of some apps.
> A made-in-Europe non-Google-led OS might gain more ground among risk averse governments and enterprises — as a sensible hedge against Trump-fueled global uncertainty.
> “Sailfish OS, as a non-American, open-source based, secure mobile OS platform, is naturally an interesting option for different players — currently the interest is stronger among corporate and governmental customers and partners, as our product offering is clearly focused on this segment,” says Jolla co-founder and CEO Sami Pienimäki .
> “Overall, there definitely has been increased interest towards Sailfish OS as a mobile OS platform in different parts of the world, partly triggered by the on-going political activity in many locations. We have also had clearly more discussions with e.g. Chinese device manufacturers, and Jolla has also recently started new corporate and governmental customer projects in Europe.”
> Google bought this platform with every dollar invested over more than a decade, they didn't do this only so that Apple had a competitor, but so that THEY had control over mobile eyeballs.
Google's biggest trick was developers. They leveraged the decaying state of Java, and it being the default CS language in a lot of places. They simple showed a more attractive opportunity to tenths of thousands of Java devs stuck in ungainful employment in "enterprise software" sector.
Nobody else in the world managed to get so much of developer mindshare overnight ever.
Developers, developers, developers, developers... Balmer got the idea, but did not know how to get it.
Jobs realised it too late, and spent too much effort toying with Internet only apps in time when most of USA was on class 2 GPRS.
Andy Rubin, well I'd say, got the right solution almost by accident, and only realised its value later in Android's life.
Makes me think whoever comes up with a mainstreamed way to do cross-platform mobile apps in Python will easily capture a large share of recent college grads, too, then.
Well, Jolla was a meme company. The best shot a normal Linux had on mobile was during N9 era, and late Meegos.
After that things went sour:
- GTK+/glib dev community began to wither simply because of older members retiring, and no new blood
- DRM flamewar with record labels
- Android diverted a great amount of community resources
- Monopolisation of smartphone SoC market.
- Elop...
Not Elop really. The Nokia board had already decided to sell to MSFT and brought in Elop to do it. If the N9 hadn't been delayed by years, things could have gone very differently. In retrospect, the biggest surprise was that the years delayed N9 actually turned out to be very good. Extremely delayed products are more often bad than good when they are finally released.
This is different from Korean manufacturers this time. This is China caught in a national security issue.
- China has a huge domestic market and it may be sufficient in itself for a profitable venture
- About half of Android phones are manufactured by Chinese brands.
- China has deep pockets and are willing to play the long game.
- They have no choice. Trump's used the nuclear option, which may well work in the short term but in the long term this has shown China and others that they have to get rid of their reliance on US tech and companies as a matter of national security.
I think Trump's move has set a ball rolling and that in 10 years we'll see the results of that... And that won't be a pretty picture for the US.
I don't get why you're being downvoted. China just needs a Deng Xiaoping moment for software. If they try top-down control, even with all the Chinese brands behind it, it will still founder behind Android.
But if they relinquish some control for the sake of getting a competitive OS where they can't be cut off, what you're saying is true. I do see them capable making an OS, technically, I'm more worried about their worldwide soft skills/soft power. Which I'm guessing they'd also want to improve, so you never know.
I think Google can compete on its own merit without having to be viewed as a monopolist, so I disagree that it won't be pretty for the US. Google will do fine on a more level playing field.
I think the post you replied to may not be referring to Google, but to all the other companies that will have a choice to build for a future Asian giant or US giant (Google). Knowing that they can be cut off by US Gov, may push investment east.
The problem is not Google per se, but the power the US government yields through Google and tech companies in general.
If 50% of Android phones are by Chinese brands then once an alternative exists they will have a big incentive in dropping Android. The end result can only be a massive market share loss for Google.
The same goes for other tech companies like Qualcomm, ARM (not US but in same boat). Anything that can be weaponised.
This is geopolitics and a global strategic issue. Google is just caught in it.
This was always China's desire, to basically build home grown tech's that could replace the ones they were using from the west. Unless the Chinese government mandates use of a single os (no android) in the domestic market then it won't work, if they do then they still don't have a viable os for the rest of the world because the rest of the world wants google, facebook and other apps which are banned in china. Facebook e.t.c. aren't going to make apps for a primarily domestic only phone where they are legally banned.
China is shifting its factories to Africa, eventually growing a market there. It won't matter what apps irrelevant markets like North America or Europe want while the rest is using Chinese services.
Chinese brands also have about 50% of the market in Thailand, followed by Samsung and then Apple. Not as big as India, but annual sales of around 20 million units is still a decent chunk of change.
It is certainly a national security issue for China (and the world) to see that the US Government is able to 'flip the switch' on so many critical tech so easily.
Sure. But for South Korea and Japan it's less so; those nations already take a national security posture that leaves them exposed if the US were to turn against them.
Trump's used the nuclear option, which may well work in the short term but in the long term this has shown China and others that they have to get rid of their reliance on US tech and companies as a matter of national security.
Indeed. Trump's heavy-handed approach in recent weeks seems likely to have far-reaching implications, and presumably the results won't be favourable for Western businesses hoping to expand more into fast-growing Asian markets in the years ahead. He's shown that any business with strong connections to the US can't be relied upon to be an economically rational trading partner, because the US is now demonstrably willing to conflate national security issues with trade policy.
That policy is also putting US allies in awkward positions. Here in the UK, we are faced with questionable demands from a long-time ally (the US) and thinly veiled threats from a big investor (China) if we comply with those demands. Presumably other allies such as Australia feel similar opposing pressures. The only rational long-term strategy I can see for nations in this position is to be clear that they will always make their own strategic decisions on security matters and which global suppliers to use for national infrastructure projects (and then to actually do so, throwing a proverbial elbow at the US if necessary). At least that way you maintain some credibility with future governments around the world as a reasonable partner.
In the meantime, it seems that the current hostile stance toward China from the Trump administration in the US is hurting the global economy, and ironically it also seems like US consumers are the ones ultimately paying most of the cost of those trade barriers.
What I find interesting is that Apache Licensed software can be relicensed even in proprietary form (as long as you make it a derivative work, with your derivative bits with a proprietary license), thus the easy way out seems to be to have a non-US entity make a proprietary fork of AOSP. I do not see a legal reason why this company would not be able to sell AOSP to Huawei under these conditions.
I am sure plenty of us remember the days when free and open source encryption software was distributed exclusively through non-US servers due to US export restrictions.
IANAL, so I wonder if I am missing something?
As for alternative platforms, I imagine plenty are US based/originating (QNX, webOS from Palm/HP originally, Android), but there are alternatives like Jolla and Ubuntu Touch which aren't.
While I dislike Huawei since they decided to stop sharing unlock codes for their phones, Huawei has one killer app that's not very much reliant on Android: camera.
Getting that camera app on one of the less known platforms and enabling Huawei phones for them would still make them appealing to a large number of customers in eg. Europe.
> What I find interesting is that Apache Licensed software can be relicensed even in proprietary form (as long as you make it a derivative work, with your derivative bits with a proprietary license), thus the easy way out seems to be to have a non-US entity make a proprietary fork of AOSP. I do not see a legal reason why this company would not be able to sell AOSP to Huawei under these conditions.
IANAL, but: any such fork would remain a Derivative Work of AOSP in which Google would hold some copyright. When Huawei came to redistribute it, they would need licenses from all the copyright holders - this company, Google, any other contributors. Normally this does not matter: the Apache license states "each Contributor hereby grants You...", and You is defined as "an individual or Legal Entity exercising permissions granted by this License".
No doubt the US government can enforce whatever capricious fines it likes within the US. But I find it hard to imagine a European court finding Huawei guilty of copyright infringement for distributing Google work that came with a clear, simple license granting them permission to distribute. If the US government wants to say that Google can't grant that permission, that's between Google and the USG. And given that the Apache license states that the grant of permission is "perpetual, ..., irrevocable" and came with a copy of AOSP that Huawei has no doubt downloaded and read years before the current crisis, trying to revoke that permission now doesn't work either.
> Getting that camera app on one of the less known platforms and enabling Huawei phones for them would still make them appealing to a large number of customers in eg. Europe.
Except that camera itself is not a killer-app. The major use-case of a mobile camera BY FAR is not just to capture content, but to share the content on social media, also in Europe. So whatever less-known platform the camera-app would be moved to, that platform would still also have to provide a good user-experience for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc. So in the end, that less-known platform would need a SocialMedia app-ecosystem comparable to Android just to match the Android-experience for Camera...
I believe that if Google doesn't license AOSP to Huawei (whether by their own free choice or not), it might be that they are in violation of the Linux kernel GPL2 agreement that they have made with Linus / Linux Foundation.
" A country banning its resident companies from engaging in contracts with a specific company breaks how our copyright system works, and as a result, breaks how open source licenses work. -- If Huawei cannot enter into a contract with Google, then they cannot enter into the Apache 2.0 licensing agreement with Google, which means that they would not have a license to distribute the AOSP codebase."
It’d be a better world if Europe could give people more choices by... giving them more choices, instead of regulating the choices that other countries provide and fundamentally control.
I'd really love to see that as well, but at the same time I have zero trust in our governments' ability to choose the right project/company/people to support/fund/subsidize.
I do hope they consider pushing alternatives, but also that it's a more organic process where "the market" has some say and not a move to give plenty of money to a university/company only to shut the project down after a few years of failure.
Yeah, and it also reveals what the world would look like if Windows phone won instead of android. Atleast for Android you have AOSP, which is atleast somewhat open source. If Windows phone and iOS were the only two alternatives, a ban on a phone company like huwaei would be a death sentence. Can't do much with windows or iOS.
The app ecosystem is a mess on AOSP. It feels like google just uses it to show a faux openness but there is no way that a non-enthusiast will get the experience they have in one of the 2 (formerly 3) major brand app stores. And that's really what this is about: app ecosystems. Making a good OS is easy, but getting mindshare/appshare is difficult (as microsoft learned the hard way).
AOSP makes no difference I think. If you are locked out of the official store, you are locked out of "Android" as people recognize it.
Yeah, the entire Chinese android ecosystem is doing Okay with the official store. Would the same have been possible without Windows Phone? What would huwaei be able to do at all if they were selling Windows laptops. Android may not be linux but it is miles better than other mainstream mobile OSes.
I assume a large company like Huawei can replicate the play store experience. Is there anything stopping them from creating a mirror of the most popular .apks?
I would assume any regulation will need to be vendor neutral so yes. I am just pointing out that Europe is not powerless even though I think the odds isn't high that they will do something like this.
I for one have been using a Honor (Huawei) phone for over 3 months with DNSFilter app running 24x7. Blocked all google domains after I installed the necessary apps from playstore. I don't see any problems if google shuts of Honor/Huawei devices permanently. I'd say it will be a benefit of Honor/Huawei phones. It will be the most privacy friendly phone out of the box.
Edit- I use Newpipe instead of Youtube. So thats the alternative for the last google service I'd need everyday.
I'd say it rather reveals most users' unhealthy addiction to Google's services, without which, this whole thing wouldn't be the 'tragedy' and wake up call it's turning out to be for many.
I have used Android for a decade now completely Google-free and no one could pay me enough money to be tracked and to run pure spyware 24/7 at this point... I enjoy immensely having a laptop replacement always on, always with me, in my pocket. No use for Play Services, advertising companies data mining all I do at all times, or 27, 42 or 59 'social media' applications running to give purpose to my life and 'communicate' with my 'friends'...
File manager, web browser, terminal, editor, LTE... That's what I need or care about. I guess not many of us left.
“Consumers are attached to the Google products and services that sit on top of the operating system,”
I doubt that. Google is pretty bad at keeping users. (Probably GMail is the strongest anchor point, but as we have seen with the G+ real name gotcha, it's better to be prepared to stop using that. Though of course most GMail users are not prepared for that.) Users will use whatever is the default.
Probably the YouTube app is what users would miss the most. And I don't know whether it works without Play Services. But it certainly works on iOS, so if there were a new platform, Google/Alphabet/YT would make apps for that platform too.
You can look at the difference between iOS and WP. Since iOS was a big market Google wanted [and wants] to be in they made the YT app. And since WP was small and late to the game Google had the upper hand, because MS wanted any users more than G wanted the small number of WP users.
In defense of Google none of the smartphone makers have tried to make their own mobile OS based on Android.
Besides I think it more reveals how Google is in the grip of US politics- it might be time for Google to draw up some contingency plans for when America goes completely nuts.
You don't really get too much with AOSP. Google's just flexing it off to portray its "open" when in reality Google's using a reasonably different version of AOSP for Android.
Can someone explained what happened recently to cause such aggressive action against Huawei with ARM , Google etc refusing to work with them. Is it related to arrest of their executive recently ?
It's part of the US/China trade war. Trump believed the existing tariff situation with China was unfair and wanted to negotiate a new trade deal. When negotiations failed he started to implement a bunch of tariffs and trade restrictions on chines goods and companies to try to force their hand. This is just a part of that 'negotiation' strategy.
Google, Arm etc. don't want to stop doing business with Huawei (since doing so no doubt costs them a lot of money), they're being banned from doing business with Huawei by the US government.
I worked for a non-Google tech company and there is literally code which prevents users in any sanctioned countries from being able to use the services.
Unless Sundar Pichai would like to go to jail, there's very little that they can do about this.
I believe there is something called the legal system? Which companies or people can use to challenge government decisions, if they don't like them. And they can at least openly express their concerns.
But I do not see that hapoening, so something (or quite a lot) is going on behind the scene.
Cause china is an authoritian government that hasn't been too nice to america business in recent years. Why would anyone stand up for them now that the illusion of market openness goes away? Google not even allowed in china so why fight on china behave very hard.
I rather talk standing up for free market. In a free market system the government can't just order companys to stop doing buisness with someone unless very good reasons are provided. I don't see that with Huawei. And china is Authorian? Yeah, so is half the world. But it would be news to me, that only "democracies" are acceptable trade partners.
China has disallowed their citizens from using Google, Netflix, Instagram, but everyone's up in arms over Trump stopping the US from doing business with Huawei. I really don't understand this.
China only bans foreign companies in its domestic markets. Trump is dictating whom third parties can do business with. For example, European firms have to cut normal business ties with huawei, otherwise they will be sanctioned by the US. And the US isn't paying for the cost of breaking their contract with Huawei.
China is not competitive in tech right now, so it needs to block foreign companies in order to have local companies have a chance of emerging, and one day becoming competitive.
On the other hand, the US is super competitive. They must do as much business with China as possible in order to discourage any new company from spawning over there, because it would create competition.
In other words, Trump is doing exactly the opposite of what is good for the US.
> This is just a part of that 'negotiation' strategy.
Your explanation doesn't answer the question why Huawei got picked. Huawei products got banned in the US way before the trade war, Huawei's exports to US is pretty small I'd say. It thus has really nothing to do with the existing tariff situation whatsoever.
On the other hand, there are many big Chinese companies exporting to the US in huge sheer volume, Lenovo is probably the best example here, interestingly, Lenovo never got treated in the same way. Why there is such huge difference?
The answer is plain and simple - Huawei managed to lead the 5G development and growing faster than anyone else. US refuses to accept that. Lenovo's business model is what US wants all Chinese companies to follow - focusing on low end craps, make money by working hard not working smart. Same goes to those crappy Chinese companies like Xiaomim OPPO, OnePlus.
This title is an extreme framing of the situation. A similar title would be "The Huawei Travesty Reveals Microsoft's Iron Grip on Windows NT".
Yes, copyright is a thing, and if you own a copyright, you are entitled to control its copying through license agreements. To characterize that as an "Iron Grip" is quite strange, as short of releasing all of this investment as open source, there is no other kind of "grip" that Google is entitled to.
Google has invested billions of dollars into applications and infrastructure for their most successful Linux distro, and yes, they own the copyright to that.
As far as I'm aware, Google does not market their current Android distro as "open source" to any great extent, so why is it more of a problem than any other piece of popular proprietary software? What about the millions of Linux-based kiosks, pub games consoles, and giant social media and advertising juggernauts who also have proprietary software that they sell access to?
Such iron, much grip. You can trivially install Google play store and services on 98% of the non-licensed phones in China.
The fact that a $50B Chinese domestic Android market is thriving with zero control by Google proves the thesis to be untrue.
Then there's Amazon's fire product line. The only reason it lags Google's play store is quality. If Amazon's hardware and software/store selection were 80% as good, they'd be a serious contender - again one needs to look at China for evidence of this, where Tencent, Baidu etc. run their own successful app stores agnostic to hardware
> You can trivially install Google play store and services on 98% of the non-licensed phones in China.
You can. I can. My mother and 95% (99? 99.9?) of the android users cannot.
> The fact that a $50B Chinese domestic Android market is thriving with zero control by Google proves the thesis to be untrue.
In Western countries it's true. You also can't build an online business in Europe if you're blocked by Google because they have a monopoly on search and nobody will find you. You can in China, but that doesn't change the situation in Europe (or, to a lesser extent, the US, I hear bing has some market share still).
> You can. I can. My mother and 95% (99? 99.9?) of the android users cannot.
My mom is quick to install shitload of stuff on her phone that would be much harder for me to do (I once tried shutting down Facebook group notifications on her phone and gave up after manually going through a 100 or so ;)). She will gladly follow a tutorial on the web, download apks from unsafe sources, allow all permissions the app asks for etc.
I, on the other hand, would look for a trusted source which would be much harder to find, would be weary of giving my credentials to any app, and would be even more weary of giving permissions that I do not find strictly necessary to an app that's coming on my phone.
Your mother sounds like she trusts herself to be able to do it, then looks for information (with you hoping she chooses trustworthy people) on how to do it. Most people I know pretty much shut down when they hit something they haven't encountered before, so they won't even search for the error message. Trust out of the way, a more open android is a good option for tech savvy people, but I fear the majority wouldn't be able to work with that.
Chinese phones come without Google apps in quite a number of countries other than China, and those are not only African countries. Last time I saw google free Xiaomi's in Malaysia and Indonesia for example
Samsung tried to hedge for this by building Tizen(Bada) and realized how much needed to be invested to get an Android competitor going, so they kept the development going, but focused for their Smartwatches, as this would have to be a "if the worst happens" plan, not something that could be a profitable venture.
LG has the Palm/HP borne WebOS for their TVs, i suspect with a similar idea at the back of their minds.
Everyone else? They're too small to realistically try to save their smartphone businesses when the green robot becomes their enemy.
Google bought this platform with every dollar invested over more than a decade, they didn't do this only so that Apple had a competitor, but so that THEY had control over mobile eyeballs.
reply