Things were difficult for Huawei. As one of the largest tech company in China, it's experiencing the U.S. President Donald Trump administration's de facto ban.
As a result, the company has been cut from its U.S. partners and suppliers, including Google which has long provided it with the popular mobile operating system.
Here, Huawei is having a shortage of who it can work with.
But Huawei is not giving up, as it starts moving on by trademarking its own operating system, the Android-alternative OS that should make it more dependent and away from its U.S.-based partners.
The OS has reportedly been in the works for years, and has been trademarked in Peru under the name 'Hongmeng' for use within nine countries. In Europe and elsewhere, the OS is better known as the 'Ark OS'.
The trademark covers smartphones, as well as computers, televisions for automotive use, and even robots.
Huawei previously suggested that the OS could roll out as later near the end of 2019. But with Google's parent company, Alphabet, in suspending some of its business with Huawei, by restricting Android usage for the Chinese company, Huawei has no choice but rolling out the OS early.
Huawei is developing its own mobile operating system to be capable of at least replacing Google’s Android on some of its devices.
This project, according to Huawei Business Group chairman Richard Yu, is the company's “Plan B”.
Some features included in this Huawei OS are: the capability of downloading and running Android apps natively from the Huawei AppGallery (Huawei's own app store), has what it calls 'ARK compiler' which improves speed over the original Android, and others.
With the continued tensions between Huawei and the U.S., and the trade war between the nations, mean Huawei may need to have its software ready and up in no time.
Following this move, Huawei is already preparing 1 million phones with Hongmeng OS installed.
There are a few reasons an Android alternative might be important for Huawei.
For starters, accusations of espionage and involvement with the Chinese government have come to a head, and it’s culminated in the world’s second largest mobile manufacturer being placed on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s “Entity List,” meaning only U.S. government-approved suppliers can supply the Chinese company with parts.
Besides Google cutting off Huawei's Android license, other U.S. partners like Qualcomm and Intel are following.
But even without U.S.-China tensions, there are reasons why Huawei might want to explore its own technology.
By launching its own homegrown products, the company can reduce its dependence on other companies in general. This was previously shown when Huawei started creating its own mobile processor business. While it does still use third-party processors, many of its devices use chips built by the company itself.
But still there are concerns.
While launching its own OS is one way Huawei could continue operations, software is not actually Huawei's strongest area, suggesting that there can be system security issues that will soon follow.
Meanwhile, Huawei has expressed its feelings about its ban, in which it condemns U.S. decision to ban the company on the grounds of national security threats, noting that doing so will "do little or nothing to protect the security of America's telecommunications networks," and that forcing operators to replace their existing equipment would "pose a greater threat" to network security.
Huawei is also suing patent fees from Verizon, accusing the U.S. telecommunication provider of violating 238 of its patents, and is making claims adding up to more than $1 billion.
