According to a recent report, the Chinese smartphone maker Huawei is currently developing its own mobile operating system just in case Google ever decides to end support for Android.
Rumors have it that the Chinese company has hired a team of engineers which includes former Nokia technicians for the project. The operating system, which may never see the light of the day, is reportedly being built in great secrecy at an undisclosed location in Scandinavia.
The new OS will be used as a backup measure as the company prepares to enter the U.S. market.
The report reads that the new OS would be ready by this fall. People familiar with the matter told a technology news outlet that Huawei plans to be less reliant on Google.
The firm is concerned that some management decisions at Google could change and the U.S. web search giant could abruptly cut support for third-party handsets or limit the options phone makers have in tweaking the system.
Sources couldn’t tell whether Huawei will build the OS from scratch or use Android as a starting point.
Huawei, which is world’s third largest mobile phone maker with an 8 percent share of the global market, is tremendously popular in China. But it struggles to gain more customers abroad.
One of the reasons for the international stalling growth is its poor external design that is no match for devices produced by South Korean giant Samsung or U.S. behemoth Apple Inc.
Additionally, Huawei has been often accused that it draws inspiration for its handsets from the iPhone. As a result, the China-based OEM recently hired a designer that contributed to the iPhone’s famed UI look
Former Apple designer Abigail Brody joined Huawei team to help the company look less like Apple. She was also behind last year’s changes in how Android skin EMUI looks. Now, she is in a race against time to make the phones less iPhone-esque by September, when the EMUI gets another update.
Broody said that she and a fellow engineer needed just one week to design “the core DNA of the visual attributes” of the first iPhone.
She is now working on removing the iPhone look from Huawei devices including features such as square icons with rounded corners. She also plans to make the handsets more Android-like and pleasant looking by adding features such as app drawers and brighter colors respectively.
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