So there has been enough coverage on the Huawei debacle, but if you still haven’t heard about it then I’ll summarize. Basically, Huawei can not use any American technology due to a ban placed on them on the basis of alleged security risks. This means the company can not work with Google who provides apps that people in most parts of the world have come to rely on like Gmail, Maps, and others. Though they were given a temporary license, for the long term that is not going cut it. This has moved the company to take steps and come up with innovative ideas to help them stay relevant in certain parts of the world.
One of those steps was to unveil their in-house operating system named the Harmony OS. The problem is that there have not been enough apps developed for that OS and the company is now trying to entice developers into developing apps for the operating system by investing more than $1billion into app development over the next five(5) years. That is great and all but it is still going to take time to create a fully fleshed system, which is time Huawei does not have considering how fast the world of technology can move on.
The idea would be to allow a dual boot. Like the one we can have on our Windows and Linux computer. So that the user can choose which of the two he wants to use at any time.
Recent reports and rumours suggest that the company is considering producing devices with two operating systems pre-installed. The two operating systems which will be installed are the open-source version of Android as well as their own Harmony operating system. This is a common practice when it comes to laptop and desktop computers where after installation of your preferred operating systems, you can choose which one you want to boot into anytime you start your computer. It will work the same way on Huawei devices as well and the good news is it can be done with an OTA update as well, which means old Huawei devices can also get this feature. This can help users familiarize themselves with the new harmony os while still having Android to fall back on. This is a cool idea which if true, could help Huawei survive without Goggle but as at a now, a rumour is all it is.
The US could choose to remove Huawei from the entity list anytime and if that happens they can work with Google. But even if that ends up being the case, it will be advisable to adopt this dual boot system to help increase the market share of the os, therefore attracting more developers onto it. Who knows when something similar is going to happen again, therefore having their own ecosystem is the only way out.