HUAWEI Technologies unveiled Friday its proprietary operating system (OS) for smartphones and other devices, as U.S. trade restrictions imposed in May threaten to cut the Chinese firm’s access to U.S. technologies such as Android.

Huawei said that for now it would stick to using Google’s Android for smartphones, and the new software will be gradually rolled out to support devices such as smartwatches, speakers and virtual reality gadgets.

The new OS is part of Huawei’s attempt to develop its own technologies from chips to software to reduce its reliance on U.S. firms amid a Sino-U.S. trade spat.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States was not going to do business with Huawei but that could change if there was a trade deal.

Huawei had previously given little information about the software, fueling speculation about how quickly or effectively it could find an alternative to the Android system.

“Harmony OS is completely different from Android and iOS,” said Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s consumer business group, referring to operating systems developed by Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc.

“You can develop your apps once, then flexibly deploy them across a range of different devices,” he told a developers’ conference held in Dongguan, where Huawei has built a lavish new campus modeled on European towns.

Huawei’s Yu said the company has no updated knowledge on whether it can continue to use Android.

Huawei is not the first major tech company seeking to develop a robust ecosystem around its own software. Its bigger rival Samsung Electronics has been using its own operating system called Tizen in smartwatches and televisions.

But attempts by the South Korean firm to grow Tizen to challenge Android in smartphones have been thwarted by lack of support from developers.

Marko Yang, an investor in developer studios who attended the conference, however, said he believed the size of the Chinese market would help Huawei overcome such a problem. Huawei says there are more than 800,000 developers in its product ecosystem.

Yu also said in order to attract developers, it was willing to cut its fee intake from app developers working for Harmony to as low as 10 to 15 percent. Apple and Google take a 30 percent cut for revenue generated through their app stores.

Zhang Ping’an, president of Huawei consumer cloud service, said that Huawei plans to invest US$1 billion to support developers, and 80 percent of that would be spent overseas. (SD-Agencies)

Huawei to build Brazil factory

HUAWEI Technologies plans to build an US$800 million plant in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state over the next three years, the governor said, as the Chinese tech giant ramps up its Latin American presence against U.S. objections.

On a trip to China on Friday, Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, accompanied by Huawei executives, said the company was gearing up to build the plant to meet expected demand following Brazil’s first 5G spectrum auction, scheduled for March 2020.

The new factory is likely to produce smartphones, the company said. “Depending on the performance of the smartphone operation in the local market, Huawei will consider building a plant in Sao Paulo in the near future,” it said in a statement.

Production would be for domestic and foreign markets, according to the Sao Paulo government.

Huawei, which has been operating in Brazil for 21 years, already has one factory producing equipment for telecoms infrastructure in Sao Paulo, with 2,000 employees.

The location of the new plant, which according to Doria will employ 1,000 people, will be decided in the coming months and the US$800 million will be invested over a three-year period following the upcoming 5G auction.

Huawei, the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer, imports handsets from China for the Brazilian market and has mulled local production.

Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia Oyj also have factories in Sao Paulo and are racing to lead 5G deployment in Brazil.(SD-Agencies)