Huawei’s revamped Android competitor is launching with support for 10,000 apps

Huawei used to be a pretty big deal, making huge strides to push into markets outside of China, while competing with the likes of Samsung and Apple. But the company was banned from the US in 2019, which was a huge blow to its business, as it was unable to sell its products to those in the US, and also it was unable to conduct business with US companies, putting it dead in the water. As you might expect, Huawei has been tactful in its approach over the years, trying to regain its momentum any way it can, producing new devices with its limited resources, even managing to be the first to release a tri-fold phone with the Mate XT.

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Of course, Huawei has up until this point leaned heavily on Google’s Android for its mobile devices, but it was forced to slowly move away from the platform, since support wasn’t being provided past a certain version. With that said, the brand started to work on a mobile OS of its own, and eventually introduced HarmonyOS. Now it looks like it’s ready to take the next big leap, announcing support for “10,000 applications and meta-services” for its HarmonyOS NEXT app market (via 9to5Google). Now, as far as what this all means, the brand is stating that these apps will support 99.9% of consumer needs, which if true, would be a very good thing.

This all sounds very familiar

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Now this all sounds like exciting news, but there is one caveat to this new wave of apps and services, and it’s a big one, with HarmonyOS NEXT now officially dropping support to sideload Android apps to the platform. It’s really unclear just how much of an impact this will have on everyday users, considering that Huawei has made big strides to create apps and services for its own ecosystem that apparently supports 99.9% of consumer needs. Huawei wasn’t very specific in this regard, so it’s unclear whether this number is meant to satisfy global or local needs, but if we had to guess, we’d think it would be the latter.

Huawei was able to accomplish this feat by having over six million developers commit to its platform, and the adaption of more than 470 SDKs. For the most part, this all sounds impressive but does sound quite familiar, and more importantly, it only really works if Huawei is able to give people what they want. With huge efforts like this, it’s clear that Huawei doesn’t expect to go anywhere anytime soon. But it will be interesting to see whether the brand can claw its way back into the US and other markets over the next few years or if it will languish as a local brand.