In the wake of Google’s Android ban, Huawei is said to be working on a mobile operating system (OS) that will replace Android on its phones. This development, according to reports, has been ongoing for years, but it’s now being accelerated amid fears the U.S. government may not soften its decision.
According to reports from Germany, a country that has been integral to Huawei’s push into the European market, the Chinese company has filed a patent to trademark the words ARK OS with the German Patent and Trademark Office.
Speculations point to ARK OS as the much-talked-about Android alternative that Huawei has been developing, but at this point in time, it’s way too early to draw any significant relations here.
Still, the filed patent includes a flurry of screenshots showing off how menus of apps will appear in ARK OS, as seen below.
An even closer look at some of these screengrabs reveals repeated mentions of “Android Green Alliance”, implying that we are indeed looking at apps that should be compatible with the Android ecosystem. The Android Green Alliance is an association made up of Huawei and other Chinese Internet companies like Tencent and Alibaba and usually sets the standards for their apps with respect to Android.
Huawei last year went global with its AppGallery app, the touted alternative to the Google Play Store that already ships preinstalled on Huawei phones. Now that an OS seems to be coming together, it makes sense that speculations of a June 2019 release would begin popping up.
However, June is obviously too soon for the OS to be ready for the global rollout. Perhaps limited tests could begin in the coming months, with a possible release date of late 2019, at least in China, although the company still insists no release date has been agreed upon.
Of course, all this will depend on how the ongoing saga between the U.S. and China turns out. Huawei was granted a temporary license to work out a solution to all these issues by August 19, 2019.
