Huawei’s CEO Ren Zhengfei has warned that if the smartphone maker is denied full-blown Android from Google by the US Government, then it’s ready to go into battle.
Zhengfei said that it will put its significant resources behind breaking the smartphone dominance of Google and Apple in a bid to become the world’s largest mobile ecosystem. According to the CEO, that will be bad news for the US.
“If the U.S. government does not allow Google to provide the Android operating system,” said Zhengfei to Sky News, “then the world may have a third operating system—and that is not in the best benefit or interests of the United States, allowing a little brother operating system into the world.”
Huawei has been talking about a new smartphone operating system since they fell foul to US trade disagreements with China back in May. Last week, that operating launched under the name HarmonyOS.
In its current form, HarmonyOS doesn’t stand to compete with the likes of Android or iOS – it is currently a low-latency operating system meant to power smart TVs, cars and watches. However, there’s little doubt that Huawei could beef it up for smartphones.
While Zhengfei admitted that building out a competitor would not happen overnight, it’s definitely on the cards unless an agreement can be met. “You cannot rule out the chance that the third operating system might outrun them someday,” he said.
