Huawei pulls the western plug: this is how it prepares for Trump's second term

Trump's return to the White House evokes bad memories for Huawei. It was the tycoon himself, in 2019, who promoted the trade ban for the Chinese giant. A ban that is still ongoing, although over the years Huawei has learned to raise its game. But at the time, Trump's move interrupted Huawei's ascent to world leadership of the smartphone market at the very best.

Today, as Donald Trump prepares to return to the presidency of the United States of America, Huawei seems to have what it takes to weather new storm winds. And the strongest proof comes in these very hours. Indeed, the Shenzhen-based company is about to launch a series of phones (the Mate 70 family) that will be essentially devoid of western hardware and software. A remarkable step forward, outlining the growing rift - in the technology sphere - between China and the United States of America.

As a matter of fact, Huawei, after years of dependence on Google's Android (an operating system that it has customised several times, even in its less performnte version), is ready to take the plunge with an entirely proprietary operating system.

Trump, in short, will be faced with a very different Huawei in 2019. A company that is proving to be doing just fine - in the Chinese market - even without its US suppliers. On the software side, all remnants of Huawei's previous dependence on Android look set to disappear on the Mate 70 devices, which will launch with HarmonyOS Next, an operating system designed to run Huawei-specific apps.

Huawei launched HarmonyOS for the first time in 2019, after the trade ban imposed by Trump cut it off from Google's Android . The first HarmonyOS versions, however, contained code from the Android Open Source Project. With the arrival of HarmonyOS Next, Huawei is completely removing Android from its smartphones. A momentous and technologically very important step.