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Text / Tang Bohu
Source/Bohu Finance (ID:bohuFN)
“Technology without borders” is only the wishful thinking of some groups after all. In the past few years, this lie has been pierced by Chinese technology companies, and now the same drama is being played out in Russia.
After the Russian-Ukrainian war, the United States waved the banner of “anti-war” and began to impose sanctions on Russia. Technology sanctions are one of them. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel and other world’s top technology companies have joined the sanctions sequence.
Last month, Google stopped offering Android certification to smartphones from Russia’s BQ, as sanctions mounted.
As the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, Google’s sanctions are extremely fatal to BQ. In addition, the United States has almost monopolized the global mobile phone operating system, and BQ has no choice, so there are reports that BQ is testing Hongmeng. Of course, Huawei quickly replied that there are currently no plans to launch HarmonyOS-equipped phones.
However, the fact that Hongmeng OS can enter the field of vision of foreign companies is indeed surprising, and it can’t help but make people imagine that after facing the rule of Android for many years, can a new mobile operating system rush out? Now, where is the chance to break out of the siege?
Overlord replacement
In 1998, Psion, a British company specializing in PDAs (handheld computers), joined hands with the then mobile phone giants Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola to form Symbian (Symbian) in order to gain a head start in mobile terminals. A year later, the operating system designed for mobile phones Saipan was born.
In 2004, Nokia acquired Symbian shares to gain control. With the hot sale of Nokia mobile phones, in 2006, the market share of Symbian system exceeded 70%, which is equivalent to today’s Android system.
However, Saipan’s mobile operating system business has long been eyed by technology peers. In 2005, Microsoft released Windows Mobile 5.0, and BlackBerry released BlackBerry OS 4.1 that year. This year, Google acquired the Android system developed by Andy Rubin, and shifted the application direction of the Android system from digital cameras to smartphones.
The disruptive year for mobile phones was 2007. This year, Apple released the first-generation iPhone equipped with iOS, which was refreshing from design to operation, and this phone also laid the foundation for the development direction of smartphones.
In the same year, Google established the Open Handheld Device Alliance with 84 manufacturers, developers and telecommunications operators to develop the Android system together. Subsequently, Google gradually became the world’s largest mobile operating system through open source methods.
On the other hand, the market share of Saipan, the former mobile operating system overlord, has been shrinking and entering a downhill period. In addition to the squeeze from competitors, the more important reason is its own reasons.
Saipan is inherited from Psion’s EPOC operating system, and the EPOC system was mainly used on the handheld computers of the year, which means that there is a problem with putting it on a phone with a much smaller screen.
For example, the Nokia E90, the mobile phone king in 2007, is equipped with the Symbian S60v3 system, and the rollover full keyboard design is quite heavy.
(2007 Nokia E90 Source: Network)As can be seen from the above figure, the Saipan system is like a coupling between a functional machine and a computer, which leads to the complexity of its operation. In response to this problem, a reporter once told Nokia that during the exchange process, a senior executive also admitted various unreasonable designs of Saipan, and mentioned that his 4-year-old child quickly learned the basics of iOS after contacting the iPhone. operate.
However, Saipan, who realized the problem, did not make a breakthrough, and then the Saipan system was gradually abandoned by Nokia, and began to cooperate with Intel, Microsoft and so on.
Data show that in 2010, Saipan was the world’s first mobile phone operating system. But this year, Android has exploded. From a market share of 3.5% in 2009, it has instantly become the second largest mobile operating system in the world after Saipan. In 2012, Android accounted for 49% of the global smartphone market.
In 2013, the Nokia 808 (PureView) became the last smartphone powered by Symbian, and Nokia was finally acquired by Microsoft. Since then, a generation of god-level operating systems, Saipan, disappeared in history with feature phones, and Android and iOS began a period of rule that lasted for more than ten years.
Encirclement and suppression: retreat without a fight
In 2012, Alibaba Cloud OS was officially released, which was called the first mobile operating system in China by the media at that time. Soon, Acer approached Alibaba for cooperation and was ready to release the CloudMobile A800 smartphone using Alibaba Cloud OS.
However, before the launch of the new mobile phone, the launch was suddenly cancelled. The next day, Google admitted that they put pressure on Acer because Acer promised to build the only Android platform, and Alibaba Cloud OS is a non-compatible version of Android. If the Acer phone is equipped with Alibaba Cloud OS, Google will cancel its Android products. cooperation and related technology licensing.
Alibaba’s explanation is that Alibaba Cloud OS is based on open source Linux, and only uses open source Android application frameworks and tools as patches.
But at this point, it doesn’t matter what the facts are. At that time, more than 90% of Acer’s smartphones were equipped with the Android system. Ali could only express his strong opposition in the end, and then turned to the TV set-top box.
At the same time, Tencent and Baidu were also interested in making mobile operating systems.
In April 2012, Tencent launched a third-party ROM (flashing package) system tita, which was installed on some models of Samsung and Google; Get apps on brands like Huawei.
But whether it is tita or Baidu cloud ROM is a flash package designed based on the Android system, which is not the same level as the mobile operating system. And Tencent’s tita was quietly shut down not long after it went online; Baidu later renamed Baidu Cloud ROM to Baidu Cloud OS, and it seemed that it was no longer satisfied with making a flash package, but one year after the name change, Baidu Cloud OS announced that it would suspend updates.
Compared with the short-lived BAT in the mobile phone operating system, the front line of the smartphone giant Samsung is very long.
In 2009, Samsung developed BADA with Linux.
In 2011, Samsung’s mobile phone sales exceeded 300 million units for the first time; in the first quarter of 2012, Samsung’s mobile phone sales broke Nokia’s unbeaten myth for 14 consecutive years, ranking first in the world for the first time.
Unfortunately, Samsung did not use its own BADA, but used Android. In the early stage, I probably didn’t have the energy and confidence. After tasting the sweetness brought by the Android system, I dared not act rashly.
So in February 2012, under the “matching” of the two major Linux alliances, LiMo Foundation and Linux Foundation, Samsung and Intel integrated their two operating systems, BADA and MeeGo, which were not well developed, and launched the Tizen system.
With the number one sales of Samsung mobile phones in the world, it seems easy to roll out Tizen and Android iOS, but this is not the case.
It was Samsung Z that was going to use the Tizen system for the first time. The phone was planned to be launched in Russia, but the press conference was suddenly cancelled. After that, it moved to the Indian market. Tizen became the operating system for low-end mobile phones. It was already 2015, and because of the low configuration And the lack of software ecology of the Tizen system, Samsung Z sales are bleak.
Statistics show that in 2015, the total sales volume of Samsung mobile phones was 320 million units, and only 1% of Samsung mobile phones using the Tizen system. In 2017, the Samsung Z4 became the last Samsung phone to ship with the Tizen system. At the end of 2021, Samsung permanently closed the Tizen store.
Whether it’s BAT, an Internet company with a software background, or Samsung, a mobile phone manufacturer that makes hardware, they have failed to make a splash in the mobile phone operating system, and no company has stepped into this track since then. Companies that are tough with Android on the mobile operating system will all come back.
The era of eradicating idols?
Android consists of two parts, one is AOSP and the other is GMS.
AOSP is the “Android Open Source Code Project”, which is also the “Android” generally recognized by the domestic people – the scope of domestic GMS applications is limited. Because of its open source features, AOSP has been used by mobile phone manufacturers around the world (except Apple), and now the amount of code contributed by it has reached the level of 100 million (lines).
GMS stands for “Google Mobile Services”, including Google Play Store, Google Maps, Google Search, YouTube, etc. According to data released by Google, GMS has more than 3 million applications.
(Source: Essence Securities)If you know AOSP, you can understand why no company has challenged Android for so many years; if you know GMS, you can understand why Samsung, the world’s top mobile phone seller, dare not support the Tizen system.
Moreover, the most tempting part of the Android system is – to use an analogy, AOSP is the rough house, GMS is the furniture, these two are now done for you by Google, you can just pay the rent and move in, as a mobile phone manufacturer , why not do it? Xiaomi’s MIUI, Meizu’s Flyme, Huawei’s EMUI, OPPO’s ColorOS, etc. are all developed based on the Android system.
I thought that a happy life would start from here, but in 2020, Google stopped the authorization of Huawei GMS, which seriously affected Huawei’s overseas market. And according to Google’s sanctions on Russia’s BQ company’s operating system, Google may still retain a backhand against Huawei.
Therefore, we have seen that Huawei, which is unwilling to give up its mobile phone business, can only be “positive” with Google in software.
In 2020, Huawei released its own mobile service “HMS Core 4.0” globally, which was subsequently applied to the Huawei P40 mobile phone series. With furniture, Huawei is ready to build a house. In 2021, Hongmeng OS will replace the soon-to-be-updated EMUI 12 and become the operating system of domestic Huawei mobile phones.
Huawei’s determination to enter the mobile operating system is now, but what is the effect? At the 2021 Huawei Developer Conference, Huawei Cloud CEO Zhang Ping’an said that Huawei currently has more than 173,000 global applications integrated with the open capabilities of HMS Core. This data is far from GMS.
In addition, according to the view of the Zhihu account “drunk in the battlefield”, there is a certain difference between the Hongmeng OS in the public perception and the real Hongmeng OS. It believes that the “Hongmeng” used on Huawei’s mobile phones is based on AOSP, while other smart devices may be modified Android or Linux or LiteOS. All in all, although Hongmeng OS has technical strength, it still has a long way to go in the face of hundreds of millions of codes.
Could it be that no other mobile operating system can escape from the Android camp?
Looking back at the history of mobile phone operating systems, feature phones made Symbian OS, but even this unsolvable operating system like Android had to collapse when smartphones arrived.
It is undeniable that the barriers established by the Android system are high enough. According to the logic of smartphones, it is insurmountable. But now, outside of smartphone operating systems, things are changing.
In May 2021, Google’s five-year-old new operating system, Fuchsia OS, was released, which not only supports smartphones, but also supports the interconnection of smart devices. This is not the Internet of Everything that Hongmeng OS will do from the beginning!
Now, whether it is AliOS, TencentOS, or Microsoft, which has been sticking to the mobile operating system but has not improved, has begun to push its focus to the Internet of Things.
If you only look at it from the perspective of smartphones, the Android system cannot see any flaws, but from the perspective of the Internet of Things, smartphones have become one of the entrances to the Internet of Things, which means that the 3 million applications built by Android in the past Ecological barriers will be weakened by the ecology of “interconnection of thousands of households”.
It took more than ten years from the emergence of Saipan system to its instant demise, and now it has been more than ten years since the Android system stood on the top of the mobile operating system. Can the Internet of Things bring opportunities to challenge the Android system and shake the world’s first mobile phone The status of the operating system, wait and see.
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