The rise of Huawei seems like a comeback story, especially with the attention being pulled away from Apple’s iPhone. Just a few years back, Huawei offloaded its budget smartphone division due to pressure from U.S. trade blacklists. Now, the Chinese electronics giant is making waves in the high-end phone market.
The company’s HarmonyOS operating system is poised to overtake Apple’s iOS in China this year, as reported by TechInsights and cited by the South China Morning Post . The decision to develop its own operating system came as a response to U.S. sanctions imposed on the Chinese company. Huawei previously used the Android operating system in its smartphones, but announced HarmonyOS in August 2019, shortly after being added to the Entity List by the U.S. government. The move was described as a “Plan B” to combat restrictions on using key hardware or software of U.S. origins.
HarmonyOS has been successful in getting off the ground, with Huawei preparing to abandon Android entirely. Chinese firms are rushing to develop HarmonyOS-compatible versions of their apps, with more than 700 million devices currently running on HarmonyOS.
Huawei’s comeback
Huawei’s return to the 5G smartphone market with the Mate 60 Pro in August last year proved to be a significant success. The company captured about 13% of China’s smartphone market in 2023, up from 7.6% in 2022, according to Ivan Lam, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research.
Meanwhile, Apple is facing challenges of its own in China, with new regulations requiring all programs sold on Chinese app stores to have a government-issued license. This could lead to Apple having to remove thousands of apps from its Chinese store. These developments may pose a threat to Apple, considering the importance of China as one of its overseas markets.
