Huawei remains defiant in face of Android threat

In a recent interview Huawei Founder Ren Zhengfei brushed off the effect of a ban on working with Google on his company’s smartphone fortunes.

Chatting to CNN Ren said he didn’t think it would be a problem to overtake Samsung as the world’s number one smartphone vendor, even without access to Google services, it would just take a bit longer. He didn’t seem to say how much longer, however. The plan is still to get as many apps as possible to create versions of themselves that will work on Huawei’s own mobile platform thus getting rid of the need to work with Google.

Apparently some US companies, including Microsoft, have already received licenses to do business with Huawei, but not Google yet. So it’s reasonable and right for Huawei to continue to seek smartphone OS autonomy, but Ren’s bluster is unconvincing. He even had the nerve to imply that when Huawei’s OS is up and running it would go back to Google even if it could, but it’s hard to imagine anyone willingly choosing Huawei’s equivalent over the original.

Elsewhere a similar tune was coming from Huawei smartphone sub-brand Honor. According to Livemint one of its senior execs moaned about not being able to use Android, which isn’t strictly true as it’s the Google services that will be with-held, and talked tough about Huawei’s alternative platform. While we’ve got no problem with Huawei continuing to fight its corner, surely it doesn’t really believe anyone would buy a phone that runs its adaptation of Android when the real deal is available.