How badly will Huawei's smartphone business be affected by Google's response to US placing Huawei on "Entity" list? (Huawei loses access to Google proprietary apps and services but is still be able to run the Android Open Source license (AOSP).
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ei-after-trump-blacklist-source-idUSKCN1SP0NB
8 Answers
Janus Dongye Qimeng, Interested in Chinese history and geography
Answered 14h ago
In simple words, Google has pushed Huawei to a corner where Huawei has to transform itself into an Apple-like software ecosystem.
What is the software ecosystem of Apple like?
They have their own operating system (iOS) based on BSD OS, development SDK(Xcode), development language(Swift), compilers (LLVM), their own frameworks or runtime APIs (Foundation, Webkit etc). These different layers of software and toolchains are called “software stack”.
An example of the Apple software stack
What’s special about Apple is that they own the full stack of the software layer from applications to the specialised hardware. It has huge advantages because they can be optimised vertically across different layers. Many specific optimisations can be performed on their own hardware. That’s why Apple’s application runs smoother despite its hardware spec is not as cutting-edge as the Android flagship phones.
What is the software ecosystem of Android like?
Now let’s look at the mess of the Android software stack. In contrast, Google Android took a very different approach compared to Apple. It wants to support Android applications on all different hardware and devices. Its layers are laid “horizontally” but not vertically-integrated like Apple.
Application layer
The variety of target hardware capability drives Google to use virtual machines (Dalvik VM or ART) and just-in-time (JIT) complication to support their applications. Therefore the Android applications you downloaded from the Google Play app store are actually “intermediate” byte codes.
When you run your app on your android phones, your Android runtime needs to detect what kind of your hardware is and prepares all the resources it needs. Then they can perform online translation from the intermediate code to the native machine code in a “virtual machine”. The virtual machine is like a “condom” if you know what I am saying.
Framework and library layer
Those apps were written according to the APIs provided by the application frameworks defined by Google or third-party libraries graphics and database. These runtime libraries are updated at each patch of the Android OS, such as Android Pie or the next Android Q.
The irony is that only a small proportion of the devices hold the latest version of Android. And what’s worse each update of their runtime API could be only compatible on a small range of Android devices.
Therefore, even if Google stop cooperation with Huawei for the next Android Q release. The latest updates still account for a small fraction of Android devices. And the majority of people don’t care which version they use. And Huawei can still use the legacy version of Android if they are really desperate.
Kernel layer
For the bottom layer, the Android runtime and virtual machines need to interact with the operating system or the Linux kernel to access the hardware capabilities such as process, memory, network, and file system management. And these are pretty-much Linux kernels which are open source because they hold GPL licences. So everyone including Huawei can use this service.
What would Huawei do to survive?
After knowing both software stacks from the two biggest software ecosystems from Apple and Google, what would Huawei do to survive?
I mean, to survive, not meant to beat Google. This is really not what Huawei wanted. And Google, alleged to be an international company with a motto called “Don’t do evil”, snapped the finger to kill a company who does nothing wrong. Yes, they can follow US laws. But their actions should stay within the US not internationally.
Compared to the ban in the semiconductor supply chains, building a full software stack is not a difficult job technically for any big company. The main problem for Huawei is how to attract and sustain its software ecosystem and its user base.
Let’s have a look at what Huawei has done so far.
A three-year preparation
Huawei software engineers have been actively committed upstream many patches to the Android open-source projects. They are already widely applied in the whole Google ecosystem. But the most advanced patches are firstly applied within the
EMUI custom Android OS Huawei EMUI - Wikipedia.
Here are some examples showing how Huawei can get ahead of Google in terms of software development.
Example 1: The Flash-friendly File System (F2FS) was firstly developed by Huawei and it was integrated into the EMUI 5.0 system and its Mate 9 phones. After the patches, those Android applications on EMUI no longer lagging. The lagging was mostly due to the latency in flash systems and they optimised away. Later they are applied to other Google Android kernels.
Example 2: Huawei proposed GPU Turbo framework and applied to use on its mobile phones. The framework can further accelerate gaming performance on EMUI phones. Their performance seems to beat Samsung and Google Pixel.
EMUI 9's GPU Turbo 3.0 now supports Fortnite, Minecraft, 17 more games
Example 3: In April 2019, Huawei announced their first “all stack” java compiler ——The Noah Ark Compiler. This compiler can statically compile java programs into native arm binaries. And the application binaries can only run on Huawei devices. They finally remove the “condom”, if you know what I am saying.
To support the Ark Compiler and static java programs, Huawei has to rewrite all the framework layers and runtime libraries. It seems Huawei engineers have already completed this task and they will be released on EMUI 9.1. That means they have no dependence on Google frameworks.
Since it is an ahead-of-time compiler, the compiled applications are highly optimised on Huawei phones. The Ark compiler improved system runtime performance by 24%, response time by 44% and third-party application performance by 60% compared to standard Android applications from Google.
Huawei announces Ark compiler: With EMUI 9.1, third-party application operation smoothness increased by 60% - Huawei Central
Now you might already be aware that what Huawei has been secretly doing for years. Why is it called “Noah Ark Compiler”? Don’t you know the meaning behind it?
A fully-fledged Huawei mobile OS under your nose
Over the past three years (2016–2019), Huawei has been secretly replacing Android components and framework one by one on all the phones who use EMUI. If you are using a Huawei phone reading this post, I would tell you that your phone is becoming less and less Android.
For example, if you are reading this post from the
Quora app. On Pixel phones, it might use libraries and frameworks that are provided by Google. But if you are reading it from Huawei’s phone in EMUI, the same Quora app is linked to libraries that are provided by Huawei’s implementation. And you won’t notice the difference.
And it is perfectly legal.
Yes, EMUI is no longer a mere Android custom theme now, they will grow into a fully fledged operating system under your nose.
Now a large proportion of Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, OnePlus phones use the EMUI interface. As all the Chinese phones use the same OS with an estimated 780 million users,
they are large enough to support a custom OS and drive Chinese developers to develop an ecosystem completely without Google. And the OS would continue to develop and “forked” from Google’s master repository. This new forked OS would represent the collective standard of the Chinese software ecosystem and continue to spark more innovations.
All these preparations are done by those Chinese software engineers who spent 9 am to 9 pm six days per week working styles (996). For the past three years, they have been working so hard to fill the gaps. We should never underestimate their efforts.
Perhaps later on Huawei would rename EMUI Operating System into its proper name “HongMeng” 鸿蒙 later sometime.
Hong Meng - Wikipedia Hong Meng is a character in the Daoist text Zhuangzi and a metaphor for the "primordial world, primaeval chaos" in Chinese creation myths.
Now just imagine a parallel universe where China naively allows Google and Facebook services into the Chinese market since 2012. The Chinese software ecosystem would have been already slaughtered by the USA now.
Can Huawei still survive in the overseas market?
So from the above section, we know that Huawei can defend itself well in the Chinese market with zero Google influence. How about the overseas market? In 2018, there are around 46% of Huawei phones sold outside China and all their customers need Google services, otherwise, they would leave Huawei.
Yes, the overseas market is still very important for Huawei. But note that for the extreme case when Huawei loses all its overseas market, it can still survive by purely relying on the Chinese market.
Solution 1: Use other country’s laws
Huawei can make use of each country’s anti-monopoly law to restrict Google. We all know that the EU is so pissed off by Google. Since 2010, the European Union has launched three separate antitrust investigations into Google for violating the EU's competition laws due to its dominant position in the market. Google has been found guilty of antitrust behaviour in cases related to Google Shopping and Android and has been fined over €6 billion.
After the ruling, Google is required not to bind Google services on any android phones. Users in the EU have their own choice to install Google services. And this creates an opportunity for Huawei to use its legal weapons and sue Google if Google attempts to forbid Huawei to use Google services on the EMUI OS. This applies to other parts of the world, especially India.
Solution 2: Add India into the equation
Another possible solution is to outsource all its software stack to Indian partners. Let an Indian company design, customise and package EMUI services on Huawei hardware. Invest in an Indian company who design a customised EMUI specifically for Indian users.
Just like the UC Browser in India, why do Indian people chose to use UC browser over Chrome browser? And Huawei can use the same strategy to bind EMUI and let an Indian company do the job.
Now if Google forbids this Indian company to use Google services on Huawei platform, Huawei can use its legal weapons to sue Google in India as well. It is not the USA anyway. India has its right to protect its domestic company for its made-in-India initiative.
Solution 3: Bridging
After resolving the right to use Google services in India and Europe, Huawei gains the legal right to use Google services. It can use a similar strategy in other parts of the world. Then it is pretty easy for Huawei to resolving the technical problems of bringing Huawei services and Google services.
No Google Play Stores? That’s fine. Use Huawei stores. Please note that the Google Play store is just a collection of apps. Huawei can provide a similar store by mirroring and recompiling all the apps in Google Play stores.
Note that this is perfectly legal for most of the countries. Because the ownership rights belong to the third party developers but not Google.
Especially for those users in developing countries, from my observation, most of them use cheap Chinese phones using the EMUI OS. And they don’t bother to root the device to change to typical Android distributions provided by Google. And the mobile phone market is not about flagship phones, but more cheap and affordable phones.
That means as long as Huawei can lower the price and let the customers stick to EMUI, Huawei can survive and thrive in the software ecosystem in the overseas market. And if Google complains about it. Then amass a group of lawyers and sue it back. In developing countries, China gets even better-positioned thanks to the connections built by the Chinese government.
Again it is a golden opportunity for Huawei. And Huawei really needs its legal division to fight on all parts of the world except the US.
The world is not just about the 1 billion developed English-speaking countries. It is much wider, how about the rest 6 billion people out there?
https://www.quora.com/How-badly-wil...-but-is-still-be-able-to-run-the-Android-Open
