Potential backfire from Google Ban

gelgoog said:

You can still access Youtube inside a browser.
It might be less well suited for a mobile phone but it still works.

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That's just not good enough. Unless Huawei can "fake" native support for everything Android users are used to from an Android phone, they're just going to jump to Samsung. That's certainly going to run into a requirement for Google (and other American companies') certification sooner or later. This is a much more intractable problem than the silicon embargo - chips can ultimately be replaced, and all a hardware customer cares about is price and spec. Here we're dealing with the network effect.

Nobody's going to settle for a less-than-seamless experience on all the apps they've grown used to. Why should they when they have an alternative?

The news that Infineon halt chip shipment to Huawei is fake news
German Chipmaker Infineon to Continue Shipment of "Great Majority of Products" to Huawei
XINHUA

DATE : MAY 21 2019/SOURCE : XINHUA
German Chipmaker Infineon to Continue Shipment of "Great Majority of Products" to Huawei
(Yicai Global) May 22 -- German chipmaker and semiconductor manufacturer Infineon will continue to ship "the great majority of products" to Chinese tech giant Huawei, the company said in a statement to Xinhua.

Infineon specifically denied a report by Japanese media outlet Nikkei Asian Review, which said the German company "has suspended shipments to Huawei."

"In any market where Infineon operates, we fully complies with all applicable legal requirements, laws and regulations," the company said in the statement, adding that it "undertakes every measure that is required to ensure reliability in meeting our customers' demands."

"As of today, the great majority of products Infineon delivers to Huawei is not subject to U.S. export control law restrictions, therefore those shipments will continue," Infineon said.

"We have a set of measures in place to thoroughly monitor any possible changes in the legal frameworks of our respective markets, enabling us to make adaptions in our international supply chain," it said. "This enables us to make efficient and proactive adjustments supporting our ability to deliver wherever possible."

Infineon is a market leader in semiconductor solutions. In the 2018 fiscal year, its sales amounted to 7.6 billion euros (about 8.48 billion U.S. dollars) with about 40,100 employees worldwide.

Why would you even need a YouTube? Perfect chance to promote China's homegrown social media and streaming platforms, which will actually aim to compete against Google's services and applications internationally. Make Google regret this decision. Already, most of Google's services do not work in China already, as a decision of the Chinese government and not Google's. So you really cannot blame Google for this, as it has been shut out of China's own markets. In fact, Google is kind of an unfortunate victim caught by both sides. For China, it already has a mature domestic ecosystem of mobile applications and services that it can internationalize and promote, a new homegrown OS and app store is a perfect platform to package and export this ecosystem. Huawei does not need to do everything on its own, it just needs to supply the platform. Even YouTube was not developed by Google, and the current maps application uses a lot of tech we acquired from a start up that made a better application than we had at the time.

FriedRiceNSpice said:

Why would you even need a YouTube?

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I should have made clearer that I'm talking about the European market; Huawei is invulnerable in China. Internationalizing Huawei's Chinese app ecosystem is going to be nigh on impossible. Even though these apps are demonstrably superior to their Western counterparts, the network effect (the fact that potential users are on other apps already, and won't switch because of inertia) is the last arbiter of such matters, and it's firmly in Google/Facebook's favour.

If Huawei can write their own apps that access Facebook/Youtube/Instagram/Google maps, etc. without requiring these companies to approve or certify them in some way, then everything's fine. If not, then Huawei's without a paddle in Europe.

ZeEa5KPul said:

I should have made clearer that I'm talking about the European market; Huawei is invulnerable in China. Internationalizing Huawei's Chinese app ecosystem is going to be nigh on impossible. Even though these apps are demonstrably superior to their Western counterparts, the network effect (the fact that potential users are on other apps already, and won't switch because of inertia) is the last arbiter of such matters, and it's firmly in Google/Facebook's favour.

If Huawei can write their own apps that access Facebook/Youtube/Instagram/Google maps, etc. without requiring these companies to approve or certify them in some way, then everything's fine. If not, then Huawei's without a paddle in Europe.

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It is not completely impossible for Chinese apps to internationalize. TikTok is an great example of where a Chinese social media app gained widespread international recognition. The mobile gaming landscape is also dominated by Chinese companies like Tencent and NetEase. Keep in mind that Google itself didn't start out as a major player of the internet either. With a field evolving as fast as the IT industry, it's hard to predict what the next trend is going to be. Google's ban will be a huge blow to Huawei's global expansion but if you look at it the other way, it is also a great chance for the Chinese software ecosystem to push forward with their global reach. Not saying that it'll be easy though.

ZeEa5KPul said:

I should have made clearer that I'm talking about the European market; Huawei is invulnerable in China. Internationalizing Huawei's Chinese app ecosystem is going to be nigh on impossible. Even though these apps are demonstrably superior to their Western counterparts, the network effect (the fact that potential users are on other apps already, and won't switch because of inertia) is the last arbiter of such matters, and it's firmly in Google/Facebook's favour.

If Huawei can write their own apps that access Facebook/Youtube/Instagram/Google maps, etc. without requiring these companies to approve or certify them in some way, then everything's fine. If not, then Huawei's without a paddle in Europe.

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The rest of my quote is about actively promoting Chinese web and mobile applications and services overseas. You cannot write your own application to access Google's services because Google owns and controls access privileges and rights to those APIs. The application that runs on the phone is only a thin client while all the actual data and functionality lives in Google's servers. Its never be quick or easy to gain market share, but it will pay off in the long run. Chinese companies need to combine software prepackaging (which it can do for Android devices as well) and smart aggressive marketing. Tick Tock is already doing well in the US.

Ren Zhengfei news conference including English subtitles

I used ubuntu mobile OS for a year, with mixed results.

I missed the google maps, there was no native amazon and ebay app, and to call a number was quite awkward, and required too much attention to dial in the car.

No Garmin, Strava.

But it was fast, and I use browser anyway for many things.

So, I think many guy who saying "no prob" for a non-android operating system never tried to use his mobile with anything else than google.

Anlsvrthng said:

I used ubuntu mobile OS for a year, with mixed results.

I missed the google maps, there was no native amazon and ebay app, and to call a number was quite awkward, and required too much attention to dial in the car.

No Garmin, Strava.

But it was fast, and I use browser anyway for many things.

So, I think many guy who saying "no prob" for a non-android operating system never tried to use his mobile with anything else than google.

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Well, there's hundreds of millions of mobile users in China that get along just fine without Google applications and web services. And when I visit China, I get along fine without it, the only hindrance is my limited ability to read Chinese. You can do stuff with WeChat that you would need like five different apps to do stateside. Even with iOS, even though you could use Google apps, there are Apple equivalents that work just fine, I always stuck with the iOS map app, mail app, chat apps, and Safari back when I used iPhones. And iTunes is far superior to the various Android and Google equivalents. Ubuntu OS is not a good example at all because it is non commercial and not meant for the normal consumer, it is open source and free. What do you mean "dial in car?"

ZeEa5KPul said:

I think focusing too much on the operating system itself risks missing the forest for the trees. Huawei can develop a first-rate OS, no problem, and being severed from Google has no impact in China since it uses the Chinese app ecosystem. The issue arises in Europe - what's to be done there? Reskin and translate Chinese apps? That might work for something like mapping services, but could there even be a Youtube app in the "Huawei Play Store" without Google's certification? Could there be a Facebook app without Facebook falling afoul of Trump's ban?


50% of phone sales. How big a part of Huawei's revenues are handsets? For telecoms customers, the problem is purely a hardware one.

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45% of revenue in 2018 was consumer business. Those should be smartphones/tablets, but there may be other products as well.

In theory, if half of overseas smartphone business is lost for Huawei, and if 10% of the business enterprise/carrier business is lost, total company revenue might drop 15%. If 90% of smartphone/consumer business overseas is lost (that figure seems a bit too steep) then 25% of the overall revenue might be lost.

Huawei certainly should not be aiming just for the current target. As the target might very well be moving. Within 6-12 months there might be a new law in US where ALL US firms are simply banned to do business with it. So the likes of Uber, Facebook etc are forced to redesign their apps in such a way that they simply can't be used by a third party. (that's assuming currently their apps are free to be ported to a new android-like ecosystem without their approval in the first place. which is a big "if".)