Amidst the ongoing Huawei kerfuffle that sees the U.S. flip-flopping on whether the manufacturer is blacklisted or not, Huawei has announced it’s developing its own OS that’ll be better than iOS and Android. So there.
Huawei already seemed to be gearing up for the eventuality of no longer having access to Android with its App Gallery – a facsimile of Google’s Play Store – so this move was inevitable.
The news comes via an interview in French magazine Le Point with Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei who claims that the operating system – called HongMeng or Ark OS – is 60 per cent faster than Android, with a higher efficiency than macOS. Interestingly, the OS is reportedly compatible with any device, not just smartphones.
Talking to the Financial Times (via CNBC) Zhengfei said Huawei values its customer’s privacy as much as Apple, claiming he would “rather die” than pass on users’ data to the Chinese government.
“Data is owned by our customers, not us. Carriers have to track every user, otherwise no phone calls could be made. It’s a carrier’s duty to track user data. We, as an equipment provider, don’t track any data,” he added.
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.