Huawei's new made-in-China software takes on Apple and Android

With its latest operating system, it is cutting ties with Western tech.

When Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, releases its latest smartphone in November, techies will strip it down to figure out how it works. The semiconductors powering the Mate 70, as the device is called, will reveal how much progress China has made in building its own chips and breaking its reliance on foreign technology. But the software in the phone may prove more important than the hardware. Huawei is expected to install HarmonyOS Next, its new homemade operating system, on the devices. This would be China's first clean break with the Western-backed systems on which it and the rest of the world rely.

China's government wants the country to become technologically self-sufficient in everything from fertilizer and passenger jets to chips and payments networks. It views Western chokeholds on critical technologies as national security risks, which could prove especially dangerous to China in a conflict. Huawei's efforts to support Chinese self-sufficiency have lately focused on semiconductors. But the country is still overwhelmingly reliant on American mobile operating systems. Android, owned by Google, and iOS, Apple's system, power about 98 per cent of smartphones globally, including almost all of those in China.