Huawei Considers Rivals To Google's Android After US Ban (bloomberg.com) 152
Huawei said it's working on its own operating system for its mobile handsets and will consider rivals to Google's Android, after the U.S. blacklisted the company, threatening its partnerships with chip, component and software suppliers. From a report: The Chinese telecom equipment giant said Tuesday it was in talks with the Alphabet about how to proceed after Google confirmed it would cut access to some of Huawei's operating system features for the company's new devices in response to the announcement. Should Google's system no longer be available, "then the alternative option will naturally come out -- either from Huawei or someone else," Abraham Liu, Huawei's representative to the European Union institutions, said at an event in Brussels on Tuesday. Liu said Huawei had been working on its own operating system but that he didn't have the details about when this would be ready. Huawei would do everything in its power to mitigate the impact of the U.S. decisions, Liu said.
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You keep saying that, but there is NO free trade with China; there's protectionism and blatant theft. But, keep up your NY Times talking points, without ever wondering why there are pinyin characters on the front page.
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You keep saying that, but there is NO free trade with China;
Then its THEIR loss, not ours.
Free Trade benefits everyone involved. If China wants to set barriers then its THEIR people who are not free to choose. Its THEIR people with a distorted unsustainable trade economy.
Putting tariffs on Chinese goods is an artificial limitation of Americans ability to find and execute mutually beneficial trade. It distorts OUR economy.
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except the west has largely allowed china to engage in free exports while restricting imports. essentially allowing china to win.
Why do you keep bringing up things that dont matter, and then declaring that they matter with unjustifiable conclusions such as "allowing china to win" ..
Win what? What have they won? Americans get cheap Chinese goods built by the underpaid, and China keeps collecting American dollars that it cannot effectively spend on anyones goods (not just American goods), and cannot even convert to their own currency because they are desperately pegging their currency to the dollar. The desperation grows by the day.
Re:That will teach U.S. industries (Score:5, Interesting)
On this one, the Orange Man *IS* bad. Free Trade is how the western world ascended.
China isn't part of the Western World.
The huge mistake that The West made with China was thinking we could get them to "come around" to our way of doing business when we let them into the WTO.
Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:2)
Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:5, Informative)
Let's see:
1. Government integration into corporations and financing that would be illegal subsidies in the West, which destroys competition. On all levels ranging from state banking issuing loans to companies that would otherwise be bankrupt to Chinese state directly subsidizing shipping out of China and penalizing shipping into China.
2. IP theft. Visit Huaqiangbei and count fake stuff. Try ordering a hundred thousand of any fake motherboard there. Get a quote. Comprehend the utter ignorance and stupidity of your claims.
3. Massive protectionist state. Foreigners cannot work in China without visa that has incredibly stringent requirements that would be impossible to implement in any Western state due to immediate and, in a rare event of them actually being correct, accusations of extreme racism. Exporting to China is de facto hampered by the state in countless ways, from extreme taxation to demands by the public specifically indoctrinated to hate foreigners. The famous case of a certain US company in China having to drop a suit about a Chinese car manufacturer copying their car because Chinese government literally ran a racist hate campaign against them, riling Chinese people up to do everything from stopping buying those cars to assaulting workers of this company comes to mind. And that's a norm in Chinese system.
If you think that Chinese have "come around to our way of doing business", you're either utterly stupid, utterly ignorant or genuinely think that all things mentioned above are actively pushed and executed on total scale by the Western countries.
Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:2, Insightful)
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It keeps amazing me how many people still have TDS even after two years of being wrong on essentially all their assumptions on Trump. Gays didn't go to death camps. He gave Jews exactly what they wanted. He's the most anti-Russian president in a long time. Etc.
And yet, you're still hallucinating about him.
Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:2)
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I love how accurately I triggered your cognitive dissonance with that line. Your pained rejection or reality that followed is just beautiful.
Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:1)
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Are walls closing in?
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Thank you for illustrating my point in such a clear and concise way.
Pot meet kettle (Score:2, Insightful)
Because it's so easy for foreigners to work legally in the USA. And America would never dream of subsidizing it's own farmers and businesses. They wouldn't even put tariffs and barriers on their closest allies would they.
You're a fucking idiot.
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Compared to China? It's a cakewalk. Green cards are given out and give that right via lottery to random people. Work visas are readily available in industries, and will often offer a path to naturalization if you work and live a non-criminal productive life.
China only takes specific ethnicities, only on strict work visa, offers no path to naturalization unless you're ethnic han, doesn't grant you right to work or right to naturalize even if you're married to a han chinese man/woman with Chinese citizenship
Your lies are certainly more convincing than facts (Score:1)
only grants work visas in field they need workers in
And in the very next breath, mentions H-1B, LOL.
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You should try posting that as root point on your main account for that delicious negative karma.
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Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:1)
You need a college degree and two years work experience in your field. Even then the police constantly come around to check. Illegal aliens are promptly deported.
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Why doesn't invading Vietnam count?
Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:1)
Re:That will teach U.S. industries (Score:4, Interesting)
China now have block monitors who report on the activities of groups of 200 families.
Churches are now; prevented from displaying external religious symbols, must fly the communist flag, have sermons approved, No under 18s, demerit points if you have the bible on your phone.
Xi wants to take China back to its communist roots, and I believe has world domination in mind.
Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:2)
Emperor Xi has clearly been reading Lord Shang's book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:2)
"Free Trade" impoverished two generations (and counting) of working Americans, while enriching a handful of treasonous profiteering bourgeoisie.
"Free Trade" transformed the formerly most powerful economy in the world into a tinpot banana republic that can't supply it's own most basic needs.
Yay for "free trade"! Fuck you, proles, that's why!
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and would rather have a Ron Paul or Jon Huntsman.
So is that a choice between a fine Kentucky Bourbon and the Codes to the Zion Mainframe?
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A legitimate and viable third choice would be great. Unfortunately the only thing Huawei will release will be an Android clone operating system that doesn't have 1% the budget Google uses on Android to make sure it is as secure and reliable as possible. So good luck with your non-fruit non-android OS phone. Much like voting for a third party candidate for president you are doing nothing but wasting your time and energy. There is a reason that established companies like Blackberry and Microsoft got out of th
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So did you buy a phone with the sailfish OS? https://sailfishos.org/ [sailfishos.org]
I don't think Huawei will need to do much to get a replacement OS working. The problem will be the associated apps. E.g. most Linux applications are poorly adapted to use on a cell phone.
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If I remember correctly, sailfish runs android apps as well.
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I'm always skeptical of that kind of claim. I do, however, run a MSWind95 application under Wine, so it's not impossible. But most such I tried were abject failures.
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To my understanding, they're not emulating like Wine but providing native support for android. OS is hardware compatible with most android hardware (you can install sailfish on many/most android phones) and can be built by the phone maker to include Dalvik and/or ART. So it basically supports all android software that normal android phone would in essentially the same way (same run-time VM that android runs to run its apps).
https://sailfishos.org/wiki/An... [sailfishos.org]
I imagine the only problem is going to be in how sa
Re:That will teach U.S. industries (Score:5, Insightful)
This will teach U.S. industries the sort of tax imposed by the Administration. And it is a tax that will keep on giving since suppliers can no longer count on stable U.S. technologies.
And US companies can't count on Chinese suppliers. For the last three decades at least the US has been pursuing a theory that economic cooperation with China would lead to liberalization of the Chinese society and that China would open up its markets to American goods and services.
Neither of those strategic goals of prosperous cooperation have become the dominant trends and we see a China which threatens the US militarily and seeks a one-way economic relationship. It was an unsustainable path forward regardless of the US administration.
I hope China will become more free itself and less adversarial to free societies and free trade will be possible... but it takes willingness on both sides.
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and that China would open up its markets to American goods and services.
Huh? The most popular phone sold by China was an American phone. Google just had an internal spat about entering the Chinese market. It would seem very much that the Chinese are open to American business in China.
What hasn't eventuated was dominance over the market predominantly due to tone deafness of cultural barriers. You can't expect to sell and market a product from the USA the same way in China as in back home. It's cultural ignorance that causes a western products to fail not only in China but the re
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The chinese aren't open about American (or foreign in general) businesses in China. Everything has to be done through an established CHINESE company "in cooperation" with the foreign company.
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Yep, if you want to do anything in China you have to work with an official Chinese partner. Which will promptly steal all of your IP and start manufacturing it and selling it under some generic name which undermines all of your sales in China and around the world once they start exporting the copies of your product. Just go look on Aliexpress or any of the other Chinese retail sites and you can find copies of anything you want for a fraction of the price. Not entering the Chinese market slows it down but th
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and that China would open up its markets to American goods and services.
Huh? The most popular phone sold by China was an American phone. Google just had an internal spat about entering the Chinese market. It would seem very much that the Chinese are open to American business in China.
What hasn't eventuated was dominance over the market predominantly due to tone deafness of cultural barriers. You can't expect to sell and market a product from the USA the same way in China as in back home. It's cultural ignorance that causes a western products to fail not only in China but the rest SE-Asia as well.
Internal spat? The Chinese government hacked Google... they could have shown up at the door with an order and Google would have had to comply like any other company working in a country that has to follow the law. But a government hacking a company is brute force not the rule of law. That is why Google left the market. If the US government sent police to raid the offices of Chinese companies I think those companies would find it hard to do business also.
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Re:That will teach U.S. industries (Score:5, Interesting)
Neither of those strategic goals of prosperous cooperation have become the dominant trends
True, but I think it's still too early to call it a failure. 30 years seems like a long time, but economic and demographic trends move slowly. The real force that may push China to liberalize, and therefore to open up, is the expectations of its people. China has been cracking down hard recently, apparently reversing the liberalization trend, but this is an attempt to rein in a likely-uncontrollable force: The burgeoning Chinese middle class. Large middle classes are powerful democratizing forces, because they have enough wealth and enough self-determination to see that they desire more, and feel that they deserve more, and when they become large enough to wield political clout they're pretty hard to contain. Having tasted something better, it's difficult to make them willing to accept being peasants again, and there are too many of them to simply ignore.
But this takes generations. The first-generation members of the middle class remember what poverty was like and are too willing to do whatever it takes to stay where they are. Even their children are insufficiently entitled. Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, however, will expect that what they and their parents grew up with is their minimum due, and will want more.
Chinese culture is, of course, very different from Western culture. In particular, the Chinese are far less individualistic and far more subservient to authority. So, maybe the above won't actually happen in China, but I think it's far more likely that it will just take longer, and the result will have a slightly different form... but individual and economic freedom will be respected, because there will be too many who demand it.
I think we need to continue the experiment for another 20 years, at least. And I think America has enough brains, resources and energy to avoid being dominated by China, especially if we're careful not to throw away the vast network of alliances and economic interdependence that we've fostered in the last 70 years. We don't have to play China's game, we just have to play ours.
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China has liberalized a LOT, just not in the ways that many in the US consider important. And the US has gotten a LOT more controlling, with increased power centralized in large corporations and the various governmental entities. Consider what someone from 1950 would think about "May I see your papers please?" We considered that stereotypical of Nazi Germany, nothing that a democratic government would routinely do or require.
Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:1)
Re: That will teach U.S. industries (Score:2)
"I think we need to continue the experiment for another 20 years, at least."
If we continue for 20 years, it will be the Chinese army that puts a stop to the "experiment".
The downside is, Mandarin is a pretty tough language to learn as an adult. And if you think unsophisticated country folk in America are "racist"... just wait 'til you meet the Chinese!
The upside is, treasonous googledouches will be among the first capitalist dogs the PLA stands up against the wall.
Could be good for China (Score:1)
In the long run this could be good for China. They already have many of the user facing components of the OS since Google services are blocked there (e.g. Play Store, search, maps) and they have Android Open Source Project (ASOP) to use as a base.
Google is desperate to get unblocked in China, which is why they keep trying to make a censored search engine for them. It's a huge market and the risk has always been that some Chinese OS vendor gets a real foothold, and forcing Huawei to do it may end up being th
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Realistically, Google will never get unblocked in China. The Chinese government and the Chinese search engines are pretty much one and the same, so something which would be considered predatory practices or jingoism in any other country is business as usual there.
I'm sure Huawei will just fork AOSP, as the easiest way to do things.
If Huawei was smart, they would reverse course and offer unlockable bootloaders and allow LineageOS.
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Replacing Google services with something else is the least of Huawei's problems
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/tec... [bbc.co.uk]
Many of the chips in their phones are covered as well.
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Looks like they will have to switch to Samsung for flash memory. For radios they picked the US parts because of FCC certification*. If that is no longer a concern then they can use Chinese parts that are only certified for China and Europe.
* Actually it's worse than that in the US. The FCC may sign off on it, but then the carriers will want to certify the chipset themselves before letting it on to their network too. It's a very difficult market to get into.
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Maybe they can pull this off, but who else is going to buy a mostly Chinese handheld operating system when the rest of the world is using Android or iOS?
There's also the problem of how innovative the Chinese are capable of being in this space.
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It will be a hard sell in the West, maybe impossible. India, Africa, South America though... There is already a lot of Chinese investment there.
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All smoke (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure this is all posturing both on behalf the US government and Huawei and behind closed doors they are fiercely negotiating a deal which will be beneficial for all the involved parties.
/. has missed that
The U.S. Department of Commerce has issued a Temporary General License [commerce.gov] (TGL) which allows for âoelimited engagement in transactionsâ with Huawei and its affiliates. In effect, this means that companies, such as Google, can continue to do business with the Chinese firm. The TGL is only temporary and expires 90 days after it was issued (May 20, 2019) which takes us up to Sunday, August 18, 2019.
Analyze: What do the Americans REALLY want? (Score:1)
I'm pretty sure this is all posturing both on behalf the US government
Agreed. With Google taking its place as a de facto arm of the US government. Assange isn't particularly my favourite person, but I think he hit the nail on the head naming Google as an arm of the US State Department.
So what is it the Americans want? This doesn't feel like part of the recent trade negotiation strategy (if you call it that) that the US is using. Indeed, the Huawei issue, in some form or another, predates the Chinese trade "spat" by a significant margin. The Huawei issue started with US a
Open source? (Score:2)
I'm curious how the government can ban the use of open source software by anyone. I can understand maybe encryption algorithms that are explicitly covered, and perhaps physically separate than the rest of the source base. Certainly they can prevent Google from providing actual support, and perhaps block Google Play because of the money that moves because of it. However, the source code is out there, and anyone can compile it. Maybe there is some trademark on the name "Android", but that's a pretty superf
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I don't think that Google can block Huawei to the AOSP project, but they can block access to the various Google services like the Play Store, Google Search, or Google Maps that come bundled on most Android phones.
As anyone who's owned a Kindle Fire tablet can attest to, an "Android Like" tablet without supported access to the Play Store is rather limiting. It's probably less so in China since they already block a bunch of Google services, but it really hampers their ability to sell smartphones elsewhere.
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As anyone who's owned a Kindle Fire tablet can attest to, an "Android Like" tablet without supported access to the Play Store is rather limiting.
That's one way of looking at it. I find a phone with LineageOS and F-droid rather liberating. Once you have experienced a phone that does not force unwanted and undeletable crapware on you and even does not install 6 extra evil apps with every update, you never want to go back.
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As if... (Score:2)
The US isn't stupid enough to force a foreign tech giant to produce a rival product to a market domineering US solution.
After all, isn't the Android kernel open source? Doesn't that mean it wouldn't be too hard to get a new OS completely app compatobe, right?
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https://www.theverge.com/2019/... [theverge.com]
And if he thought launching a war with Iran would get him elected in late 2020, you can bet he'd do it. He's afraid he'll go to jail when he gets out of office and having something with China to wave around before the election is the only thing that matters to him (no matter the long term damage done to the U.S. leadership in smartphone OS marketshare etc.). He couldn't care less. JMHO...
The lesson for all foreign companies (Score:5, Informative)
We have already seen the EU and Russia developing their own GPS networks in order to be independent if the USA ever pulls the plug. There is talk of Russia developing its own DNS for the same reason. The lesson will now be evident to all large companies. It is like outsourcing: if you haven't got the stuff under your control, you are at the mercy of outsiders who do not have your best interests in mind.
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... don't make yourself dependent on american-controlled products or systems.
Or perhaps the lesson is that if a country implements laws that steal corporate secrets via "partnering", even though short-term incentivized MBAs might be willing to sell out the company's future, foreign governments will eventually step in to stop the bleeding.
The surprise isn't that this extreme reaction was taken by the US government but why it didn't occur earlier.
No country other than China has the audacity to so directly and boldly engage in such technology stealing practices and no other country ha
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Should be don't make yourself dependant on any one company.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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There has got to be some alternative to this seemingly random brinksmanship.
Off course. Ditch the indirect elections and experience some real democracy.
YES! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes yes yes! Please release another OS and a new app store and force people to develop for three platforms again!
Maybe we'll finally see more portable frameworks, which will make the road more open for 3rd party operating systems. Or better yet, more companies will need to focus on mobile websites first.
I'm sick of this Android/eyePhone bullshit. My next device will be a KDE Plasma Mobile.
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"Hunandroid."
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Unfortunately it will probably be an Android fork, capable of running Android apps. Starting from scratch is suicide because the first thing people will do is try to install Facebook and Angry Birds and find they are not available.
It will probably be Android with Huawei services replacing the Google ones, such as the app store, search, maps, and cloud storage. Pretty much what they already have in China, just translated to western languages.
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It's going to be a one hard sell in the West to sell the "Android with Chinese characteristics" to Western audience. For starters, lack of google play services is absolutely crushing. Chinese android specifically replaced much of Western services with Tencent et al alternatives. But that's ok for Chinese, because most of these services don't work in Chine in the first place, so there's no competition at all. You get whatever CCP certifies as acceptable.
This isn't going to fly elsewhere. You'll actually have
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Or better yet, more companies will need to focus on mobile websites first.
Which would run straight up against two things: iOS WebKit's lag in support for new web APIs, and the "I don't want any JavaScript! Real-time bidding poisoned the well! Websites should be static, apart from navigation and form submission, and apps should be native!" mentality of some of the more traditionalist users of Slashdot and other forums.
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Check the Librem 5 (this is my next phone).
Hardware and apps ? (Score:1)
OK, so you can write your own OS, or copy one, or fork AOSP.
But how do you get around the chip ban (i.e. Qualcomm) ?
And users mostly care for apps. If you build another OS, how do you make sure the apps of (mainly US) companies will be available ? You need that to sell outside of China
Alternatives? (Score:2)
One last chance... (Score:2)
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no market for weapons against the buyers (Score:1)
Bound to backfire (Score:3)
The Administrations intent here is to put pressure on China and Huawei.
However Android is under the Apache Licence.
Huawei will likely respond by forking Android it and cultivating their own expertise in software to go along with what they've done with hardware.
a new beginning (Score:2)
Android is counter-intuitive and convoluted soft. Its main philosophical goal is making money via advertising, but not serving its clients.
what would happen (Score:2)
what would happen if huawei decided to cancel all their software licenses that is running their equipment in communication centers across the US and other countries that support the ban.
US rules, (not) OK (Score:2)
the US wanted China to be it's subservient labour pool
China is going to crush the US like a bug
Sailfish OS (Score:2)
Huawei fund another mobile OS (Score:2)
Google and Android are a horrible privacy idea. I hope Huawei can fund an alternative that removes all traces of Google.
Huawei can make a fake European city as its campus, fake Macbook as matebook. Work that fake magic and make a fake android.