Huawei Reportedly Developing Mobile OS Fearing US Actions

Earlier this month, ZTE was slapped with an export ban by the US for continuing to violate trade regulations with regards to an Iran supply deal that went down several years ago. Fearing the same kind of treatment for its own potential violations, especially with regards to reports of spying on customers circulating the web, Huawei is reportedly developing its own operating system to replace Android.

The original report was by the South China Morning Post, which claimed that Huawei had started development of the project back in 2012. That was when the company was hit with a trade violation alongside ZTE.

With the other Chinese tech giant getting slapped with an export ban, which results in ZTE being unable to get goods and services from the US, Huawei is worried that a similar ban might cut it off from the Android OS. With the only other OS that is usable in the mass market alongside the iOS, losing the core program by Google would mean certain death for the Chinese company’s products.

According to insiders, the OS that Huawei is developing is apparently a part of its investment in worse-case scenarios, Engadget reports. Right now, it would seem that the OS is nowhere near the quality that Android is at, which isn’t surprising since Google has had nearly a decade to work on its product.

More to the point, it would seem that the company had no current plans to even release the OS in the near future. Using Android right now comes with a lot of perks, with an appeal for its products being one of the biggest. If it should lose this appeal, even its most attractive handsets might start looking like too much trouble than they are worth, especially if buying them means using third-party software and the like.