After Donald Trump became president of the United States for the second time, a trade war between America and China has reignited. Trump imposed incredibly high duties on Chinese products and may impose other restrictions. Chinese smartphone manufacturers have already begun to prepare for possible problems.
As a reminder, during Trump’s first term in office, American companies were banned from cooperating with Huawei, which effectively restricted its access to the Play Store and other Google services. Huawei then decided to act independently and created own operating system — HarmonyOS. And now there are rumors that Chinese smartphone makers are looking for a backup plan — in case they are sanctioned in the same way as Huawei was.
Xiaomi, Oppo, vivo, and OnePlus — along with Huawei — have allegedly started discussing the idea of creating a version of Android that does not require Google’s involvement. The upcoming Xiaomi HyperOS 3 update is said to be the basis for such a transition. However, it is not yet clear how closely the brands will cooperate with each other and what role Huawei will play in this.
Huawei will eventually refused to be compatible with Android applications on its platform. Whether other companies will follow suit remains to be seen. It is also questionable whether they will adopt such Huawei developments as Ark Compiler or Petal Maps.
The latest statistics show that Xiaomi is currently the largest smartphone manufacturer in China. It is immediately followed by Huawei, with Oppo and vivo in third and fourth place. Together, these companies accounted for two-thirds of all smartphone shipments in China in the first quarter of this year.
Despite the loss of Huawei’s global leadership, Xiaomi, vivo, and Oppo are still among the top 5 global brands. And if these players start selling smartphones without Google services, it will significantly change the balance of power in the global market. But will such smartphones be popular outside of China?
Source: gsmarena