The video explores Huawei's ambitious move of launching HarmonyOS, an original operating system that aims to replace Android on its devices. This release is a strategic response by Huawei towards achieving tech independence, in light of ongoing trade tensions between the US and China. The introduction of HarmonyOS marks a significant milestone as Huawei continues its battle to maintain its standing in the global tech market.

The video delves into the challenges that lie ahead for Huawei in getting global app developers to create applications for HarmonyOS, considering its China-focused release. Despite its gradual local adoption, there are significant hurdles in convincing international app developers, especially with the non-integration of Google's services. Furthermore, the discussion pivots to potential competitive tensions between Huawei and other domestic players and the broader implications for global firms like Apple.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. accelerated [əkˈsɛləˌreɪtɪd] - (verb) - To increase the speed of something; to hasten its process. - Synonyms: (hasten, quicken, speed up)

So I would say it was accelerated by the sanctions.

2. sanctions [ˈsæŋkʃənz] - (noun) - Official orders or laws stopping trade with or other commercial activity with a country. - Synonyms: (penalties, restrictions, embargos)

Is this something that Huawei has planned for a long time, or was its development purely triggered by the US sanctioning Huawei? So I would say it was accelerated by the sanctions

3. vertical integration [ˈvɜr.tɪ.kəl ˌɪn.tɪˈɡreɪ.ʃən] - (noun) - A business strategy where a company owns multiple stages of its supply chain. - Synonyms: (consolidation, merger, integration)

It feels to me like Huawei's taken a step closer again to the Apple model that, that so called vertical integration.

4. ecosystem [ˈiːkoʊˌsɪstəm] - (noun) - A network of interconnected elements, often used to describe technological systems. - Synonyms: (network, system, environment)

When they're, when Huawei is even struggling to get its own homegrown China ecosystem of apps on board outside of China, it's an even bigger stretch.

5. fragmented [ˈfræɡ.mɛn.tɪd] - (adjective) - Being in separate parts; disjointed or divided. - Synonyms: (disrupted, disjointed, divided)

Because the market at the moment is quite fragmented. I believe a lot of them are running effectively forked version of Androids.

6. proposition [ˌprɒp.əˈzɪʃ.ən] - (noun) - A statement or assertion that expresses an opinion or a judgment. - Synonyms: (suggestion, statement, proposal)

What does that do to Huawei's proposition in the Chinese market versus A Apple but B the domestic players.

7. resurgence [rɪˈsɜːdʒəns] - (noun) - An increase or revival after a period of limited activity. - Synonyms: (revival, renewal, comeback)

But now that you have Huawei coming back up, there's this resurgence coming along.

8. geopolitical [ˌdʒiː.oʊ.pəˈlɪt.ɪ.kəl] - (adjective) - Relating to politics, especially international relations, as influenced by geographical factors. - Synonyms: (international, global, diplomatic)

What if it is a scenario where they have to, for whatever reason, for geopolitical reasons, what if they have no other choice but to license it?

9. critical mass [ˈkrɪtɪkəl mæs] - (noun) - The minimum amount of something required to start or maintain a venture or process. - Synonyms: (threshold, sufficient amount, necessary mass)

But nonetheless, there's just so much critical mass there that is still sitting there that it is difficult for a third OS to kind of dislodge that.

10. splinternet [ˈsplɪn.tərˌnɛt] - (noun) - A characterization of the internet being divided into smaller groups with lack of global uniformity. - Synonyms: (divided internet, segmented web, partitioned network)

But does AI and the complications that brings within the Chinese market create a further Divide. And we're just going to see this separation increase. Yeah, the splinternet. Right.

Can China create a global Android or iOS competitor?

Back in 2019, Arjun wrote an article about how Chinese tech firm Huawei was launching its own operating system to one day replace Google Android from its devices and rival the likes of Apple's iOS. For the last five years, Huawei has rapidly developed HarmonyOS to give it its English name, and this week it released a version that will replace Android across all its devices. It marks a significant moment in China's push for tech independence as trade tensions between it and the US continue to simmer.

Beyond the Valley. Let's get straight into it and introduce our special guest. Brian Ma is Vice President of Client Devices Research, covering mobile phones, tablets, PCs, you name it. If it's a piece of consumer tech, Brian is happy to talk about it. Brian, thank you for joining us on beyond the Valley. Yeah, thanks for having me. Great to be here. You're in Singapore. That's right. That's right.

Well, before you end your day, thank you for joining us and giving us your insight on this kind of breaking story this week, at least. It's obviously a long time coming. I. I just want to get into a little bit of background. But before we do that, let's play Stat of the Week, or at least hear Stat of the Week from Arjun. Yeah, Bit of a different one this week. Again, been trying to switch it up. 19,999 Chinese yuan. Chinese Yuan. Okay. Sort of give a little bit of a 19. I mean, it doesn't really matter. Some context detailed at 19,900. You on? Okay. Did you hear that, Brian? I did. We're talking about 2,800 US. Yep, yep. Roughly guesses. Yeah, guesses at the end of the show. Thanks for that.

Yeah. Wow, that's a really good currency conversion. That's fantastic. That was live. Did you type that into your laptop or did you manage to do that in your head? I'd like to say it was the latter, but I'll confess it was the former. I was like, who is this genius? Yeah. I needed Brian on my recent trip abroad to help me convert currencies. Brian, let's do a little bit of background then, on Harmony os. Is this something that Huawei has planned for a long time, or was its development purely triggered by the US sanctioning Huawei?

So I would say it was accelerated by the sanctions. So let's crank the clock back. Right. Even before the sanctions had hit, they'd been talking about growing, you know, doing this homegrown OS for quite a while. But it wasn't quite, at least from an outside observer perspective, it seemed like it was targeting more of fringe use cases, right? IOT type use cases. But then of course, you know, as the sanctions hit, from what I'm guessing is that really, you know, basically put the pedal to the metal and said, whoa, you know, we've really got to be independent here. And that's when they came out with harmonyos.

But at that point in time, based on the Android open source version, right, aosp, that version of course still ran Android apps. Of course you had to reconfigure the Google services away from it, but basically the bulk of those Android apps could still run and hence still at application compatibility. But I think the thing that we finally saw over this past year and they finally made official last week was now they've formally launched HarmonyOS next, right? Next, the next version of it, which is fully free of aosp, of the Android open source version and basically cannot run a file called an APK file. APK files are basically Android apps, right? So you can no longer take an Android app and run it like you could on the previous version of HarmonyOS.

Back then they would just call it HarmonyOS, no next suffix at the end of it. So now that we've reached HarmonyOS 5.0 or HarmonyOS Next, it is free of that. Hence what that requires is application developers to write native applications for it. They can't just reuse that Android app. It's been a long time coming back to your original question, but it has morphed in many ways and really been accelerated by the sanctions.

I think just to add a bit more context as well, just to what Brian was saying is Huawei at one point was the biggest smartphone player in the world by market share. And outside of China it was using Android. And that was partly what helped it become so big. People were able to buy a Huawei phone and know that it was running a recognizable operating system and also key really access to all the apps that were on the Google Play Store, whether it be Facebook or Netflix or Amazon shopping app, whatever it may be. And that was partly why it was able to grow so big internationally. And when those sanctions hit, it was cut off from Google and you know, its market share was crippled and particularly in the international market.

So, Brian, as we talk about the Harmony OS next, one of the big issues here is if they've created sort of a standalone independent operating system, is this going to be hard to internationalize in the sense that, you know, if it's a Chinese based operating system and developers need to write apps for it, that would mean, in theory, all the big global apps that are used outside of China would need to create applications for a Huawei operating system, which seems a bit of a stretch.

Yeah, very much so. You're absolutely right. And in fact, from what I've seen of their announcements of HarmonyOS Next, it is a China only version. Right? So rightly so. They're prioritizing on their home market. Even in their home market they're struggling to get, you know, I think they said they had 15,000 apps, native apps on board already, which is pretty darn impressive. But one of the key apps that's needed even for their home market in China is WeChat. Right. And my understanding is right now they're still in beta. Tencent has been one of the slower ones, granted, they've been able to get some of the other big ones on board. Douyin is on board, Alipay, a lot of the key critical apps, even Honor of Kings, the killer game in China. That one fortunately has been. There's a native version on it in China.

Now to your point, Arjun, what about outside of China? Right, that's where it gets even harder. When they're, when Huawei is even struggling to get its own homegrown China ecosystem of apps on board outside of China, it's an even bigger stretch. And that goes back to, you know, that earlier question on Even when we looked at the Android version of HarmonyOS, the AOSP version, I should say, of HarmonyOS. Like you said, Arjun, there was, there was no Google services at the time, but it could still run APKs. You just had to reconfigure those hooks for these Harmony services. Right, these Huawei mobile services I think they called it.

But even then developers struggled to, developers outside of China struggled to convert their apps, if you will, probably the best way of putting it, convert their apps such that they could run on Harmony os. Even though they were Android apps, they were still plugged into these Google services that Google devices no longer had access to. So yes, this is an even more difficult leap now because not only do they not have the Google services for those APKs, but now that Harmony OS can't even run those APKs anymore. Now they've got to write native. So yes, it is an absolutely even bigger stretch. But I think in Huawei's defense, they have said this is a China specific os, at least for the time being. Who knows where their ambitions will go from here. But at least for now, I think they're rightly so prioritized on the whole market.

Frankly, if you look at Their hardware shipments, they're basically concentrated in China right now as well, for the same reason that you mentioned. Right? You try to sell Huawei phone in Western Europe, in parts of Asia Pacific, wherever it might be. There's basically very little in terms of apps, in terms of an apps ecosystem available for users, which dramatically draws down the value of the device, the utility of the device. People can't really do that much with the device anymore, unless maybe you're a Chinese expat, for instance, that is still in that Chinese Internet app ecosystem and heavily dependent on those rather than on Western apps.

But do you not think, Brian, that the app development or the developers are going to ramp up their efforts in terms of delivering apps for this operating system? Because it looks like harmonyos isn't going anywhere, Huawei is not going anywhere for that Chinese market. They're not going to suddenly go back or pivot back to Android or do some sort of 50, 50 split or that this is the future. So surely these app developers are going, right? We need to work out a way to get into that market, to get onto that operating system.

They could. And on paper, it's enticing. Right? You talk about, you know, you got a billion and a half people in China, you got a huge user base in many cases in large mature cities where these developers in theory could say, hey, you know, I want to target all those users in Beijing and Shanghai and Guangzhou and, you know, all across this gigantic population, I could potentially go after that. But the problem is, of course, when a developer is writing for a new S, it's investment in cost. They've got to pay for developers to not only write the code, but also test the code and maintain the code afterwards.

So there's cost here in order to go after a third OS. Already having the right applications for iOS and Android outside of China is already quite a cost burden. Then having to throw in a third os. That's why it's been so difficult globally for a third OS to take off as well, too. Right? So in this case, sure, the China market is enticing for them to go after, but still they have to make that kind of a business decision on whether it's worth that investment. Plus, since it's China only at the time being right, China, you've got your whole. It's a whole nother world there in terms of applications. There's so many local competitors, very, very fast moving and aggressive ones. Can services from overseas compete in China? You've got regulatory issues. What if you get cut off? What if you to withdraw from the China market, whatever it might be. There's, there's, there's risks there as well too.

So I suspect that most developers overseas, you know, they, they hesitate a bit when they think about those risks going in. Even if there is a gigantic population in China that would be enticing. Slightly tongue in cheek question, slightly serious though for the Chinese developers. Could they just use one of these AI services that effectively writes code for them now? Yeah, well, I mean on a more serious response to your question, I would say separately that this world is searching for use cases for AI, particularly on device and one of the few things, aside from meeting transcription and summarization, one of the few things that really seems to have taken off is code writing code.

Now whether or not you can get whatever GitHub, Copilot or whatever other tool of your choice is for writing code, whether that could help you to port that application over to HarmonyOS next, I don't know. I'm not a developer so I don't know where that would go. Maybe there would be of some assistance but even then I'm sure you still need humans to go there and test it. Real life use cases, it's still an investment that you have to maintain and it's just something that sucks away your attention as well too as a developer.

Brian, with HarmonyOS next, it feels to me like Huawei's taken a step closer again to the Apple model that, that so called vertical integration. You know, even before it had Harmony OS Next, it was designing chips for its smartphones much like Apple does. It was in control of the hardware. The only real piece that was missing was that software component. You know, Apple has obviously iOS but now with its own OS. Now Huawei has that whole system at least in, in China. And while there are many restrictions in terms of its ability to, to get access to manufacturing of the most advanced chips, it still appears to be persevering with its with its own design chips.

And so with that if Huawei becomes successful with, with the operating system Harmony OS next and it manages to get more apps on board, some of the major ones, particularly in China. Yeah. What does that do to Huawei's proposition in the Chinese market versus A Apple but B the domestic players, the Xiaomi oppo vivos of the world. Yeah, yeah, definitely I think and if anything, right all of this verticalization, even if they were doing it before the sanctions, the sanctions have again accelerated some of that urgency to do so and in the process, to your point on how that positions them against Some of their competitors, I mean just the shift, sheer amount of national pride that goes into the company right now that draws people to their products is precisely because they have been successful at getting these products out despite all these roadblocks that the US government has tried to throw in front of it.

Right. So there is a tremendous amount of pride that the underdog has succeeded against these, you know, these, you know, the powers that be and is certainly helping to get them in a good position against some of their competitors. Now to your hypothetical scenario here. Of course, there's a lot of ifs. There's a lot of very big ifs, particularly the part about them getting access to components, the hardware components in particular, and in getting silicon that is on the latest and greatest process node. Now many, they can kind of get away with it for a while and I'm told that some of the yields are improving.

But even then, can they continue to get access to these highest end chips? That I think is one of the biggest problems in this scenario. For them to be fully self sufficient. It'll be interesting to see how they navigate this. But obviously a lot of this is kind of happening behind closed doors as well.

This is obviously a significant moment for China and Chinese tech scene, but it's also pretty significant for the US companies. Where do they go from here? I mean, we've seen Apple fall out of the top five smartphone players in China this year. Do they just, you know, accept it and maybe make a decision that actually this is a market that we're not able to be in anymore with the current state of play?

Well, I would say, I would point out first of all that Apple actually did bounce back into the number two spot in the most recent quarter, partially because of seasonality as the new products launched and they moved in there. But nonetheless, your question stands. At the end of the day, you've got someone like Huawei that has continued, continue to put competitive pressure on Apple in China for many of the same reasons that we were just discussing earlier, right. That nationalism, just that huge amount of pride. People want to buy that homegrown product in addition to of course it just being actually being a good product. The cameras on these products are fantastic, right?

So yes, I think maybe to your question, as you look at companies like Apple trying to compete in China, there's definitely a lot of pressure on them now thanks to the resurgence of Huawei. You could argue that actually Apple recently got into the good position that it had been in the past couple years precisely because Huawei was suffering. Right. In fact, Maybe let me reframe this a bit. If you look at the premium part of the smartphone market in China, US$600 and upwards, let's say basically it only comes down to two players in that market. It's Apple and it's Huawei. Yes, Xiaomi has a high end phone, Oppo has a high end phone, but they're relatively small in terms of unit shipments. The bulk of the market is basically Apple and Huawei. And of course when Huawei couldn't get access to chips, it basically left that market for Apple to just gobble up Apple.

That's why Apple had so much of a position in the high end market in China for quite a while. In addition to. Of course, yes, of course Apple has brand cache and it is a good product as well too. It is a status symbol. But now that you have Huawei coming back up, there's this resurgence coming along. You know, it is a situation where we do see that pressure continuing to be applied to Apple and obviously that's why I think Apple shareholders are a bit concerned. You know, is that going to continue to be a challenge for them there?

And I don't think that pressure is going to go away. I think you're going to continue to see Huawei continuing to press there. It's not to say I definitely wouldn't say that Apple is doomed by any means. Apple still is in a good position. In fact, if anything, we've seen them holding on relatively flat from where they were same time last year in the most recent quarter. So they're still holding on despite the competitive pressure. But yes, they've got to make sure that they, you know, that they continue to stay competitive, that they continue to have the footprint and the appeal.

But also we do need to keep in mind here, let's come back to this AI topic right now. More and more as AI services start to roll out and become a competitive differentiator and you've got the likes of Oppo and Xiaomi and a lot of these folks rolling out their own AI services. Of course, within China. We're talking about here, we're not talking about outside of China where you can rely on Google and Android and that sort thing. And Apple likewise has that same situation within China. Apple intelligence, because the government, because the regulatory situation there, right, they've got to get approval for those AI models.

They don't have a partner yet, not that they've publicly announced. So Apple needs to have that solution in China as well too. That's going to be competitive. So to your Question about the competitive positioning. Can Apple compete in China? Yes, of course. There's still this whole thing about the brand value and the products, the hardware products themselves. But now increasingly we also have to keep an eye on the AI portion of this. Does Apple have that localized AI solution that is government sanctions and approved, and how does that stand compared to what Oppo or Huawei or Xiaomi or whomever else is offering domestically?

Yeah, and Brian, I've seen over the past sort of few weeks a lot of those players you've just named there have been talking up new AI features on their devices, particularly as you mentioned, in China as well. How does this relate to what others are doing in the Chinese market as regards operating systems? Because the market at the moment is quite fragmented. I believe a lot of them are running effectively forked version of Androids, more user interfaces than anything. But and so, you know, you hear about Oppo, Oppo talking about its sort of software and Honor talking about its software and new AI features, et cetera.

Is there a push at the moment in China for these other companies to be creating their own operating systems at all? Well, in theory, yes, but in practice, I think that just fragments the market even further. I would say it's not so much about them developing their own operating system as it is them trying to differentiate through these AI services. Right. Are there different types of AI models that they can develop that help differentiate them? Yeah, that's probably more of where the differentiation is. But unfortunately the problem is right now. I mean, sure, there's a lot of innovation going on in the industry and more power to the vendors who are, who are developing this. I think it is good that the industry is being pushed ahead.

But let's face it, at the end of the day, let's think about these various use cases, these various AI use cases, regardless if it's in China or outside of China. I mean, what are we looking at? We're looking at magic eraser like functions. We're looking at maybe some kind of a email summarization type of feature. They're the standard AI types of use cases that we've heard about from pretty much everyone. I would argue that yes, there's a little bit of differentiation, but not a whole lot yet. And none of them yet with a particularly differentiate or killer use case that really sets them apart just yet.

So we're not quite there yet. But of course, keep in mind this is still very, very early innings for the AI space right now. Inevitably there's going to be some killer use case that comes along. It may not. In fact, most likely it's not going to come from these hardware OEMs for that matter, it's going to come from a third party developer that runs at an operating system level, runs across multiple devices. So anyway, I think the differentiation at the, at the, at the hardware level or at the phone level, it's not going to be about them doing their own third party OS or their own homegrown os. They will have some differentiation at an AI level depending on the models that they install.

And maybe some of these. We've actually seen some AI agents. Right. That's actually the thing that's emerging recently. Honor has been showing off these agents that will auto unsubscribe you. They can take over your phone. But we've seen other vendors kind of do that too. Motorola has been doing that as well. Right. Lenovo was, was showing that at its Tech World conference. So anyway, there's, there's some of that differentiation. But I think really for me, when we look at the, you know, five years out from now, as we start looking at smartphones and where this is going and where all this AI stuff is going, we're still missing that killer app. It'll eventually come. My bet is within a few years we'll have some third party developer come up with that next killer app.

But we're not quite there yet and of course it's hard to say at this point what that is going to be. Do you want to hear my recent killer app? What is. So I haven't revealed this, but I was recently on my honeymoon in Japan and so we were out by Mount Fuji and the weather was horrendous. There was no visibility, couldn't see the mountain at all. We stayed for a couple of nights. One morning I sort of got up slightly early, you know, 8:00am, walked out and I finally caught a glimpse of a bit of it, but my wife was sort of still getting ready and packing our bags as we were leaving that morning.

And so I took a picture of Mount Fuji and I ran back and I was like, come on, let's go see it. So we got there and the clouds had covered it all again. Oh no. And I was like, right, let's take a selfie in this position. So we took a selfie from where I took a picture of Mount Fuji and at the time I was trialing a Samsung phone and so I used the Samsung photo app and their sort of new editing tools on there, their AI editing tools to effectively just click on the selfie of Me and my wife copied that and pasted it into the picture of the clear Mount Fuji to see how this would be. And it looked rubbish.

It looked like a clear Photoshop sort of situation. Actually. I think rubbish is a bit harsh. Rubbish is a bit harsh. It looked, it looked good, but I think my proportions were all out. You know, sort of Mount Fuji was too small, our heads were too big and Mount Fuji was too big in one, our heads were too small. So. But it's getting there. I mean, imagine like a little while ago, I wouldn't even be able to do that without having advanced editing skills on, you know, Photoshop or some other application. And I managed to do that on the fly. I thought that was pretty cool, but also disingenuous.

Yeah, well, I was just going to say Google's Pixel team has that new add me feature. Right. And so I'd love to know if that would have done a better job, but maybe. Yeah, well, this is, this is the thing as far as killer apps can go. This is one of the immediate things I found. And so I need to try all the different apps out there to see who's got the best on the fly. But not photo editing. This one wasn't necessarily killer. This was. I mean, yeah, it could, you know, one day it could potentially maybe. Yeah, it may have just been my photography skills also, you know, we can't discount that because I have been criticized for them.

You're touching on a really good point though, right? Which is all these AI features that vendors are talking about in the industry, are they just a gimmick? Right. They're kind of like a novelty. They're fun to play with the first time around. But is that something that is really long lasting and is it something that is going to motivate someone to say, oh, I see, my friend can do that on his or her phone and I can't do that on my phone. I need to upgrade my hardware. Right. In theory, that's how this is going to work in practice. Are we really there yet with, you know, have we gotten beyond the party tricks basically? And yeah, is, is that use case that you mentioned, Arjun? Is it, is it, is it something that is going to draw people to get that phone?

I was going to just take it back to the AI topic because you brought it up, Brian, and I just think it's really interesting. We're already seeing this sort of pulling up the drawbridge at the moment with HarmonyOS. But does AI and the complications that brings within the Chinese market create a further Divide. And we're just going to see this separation increase. Yeah, the splinternet. Right. I think, I mean, we've always kind of had the whole Chinese Internet ecosystem in its own world, if you will. And yeah, now that this is further, further drawing a line there. Yes, I definitely do think that it makes it more difficult.

You know, if Huawei really is successful at not just deploying it on its own phones, but the rumors are our other OEM is going to license this os, then that further draws that line in the sand between China versus the rest of the world. So that is a very, you know, it is a scenario that I think we do need to keep in mind and unfortunately, I think the direction or the momentum is moving in that direction. Whether or not it's going to. We're going to get there very quickly. Well, let's see where we go with that. But yeah, it's starting to move in that direction just very quickly as well.

Brian, I wanted to pick up on that point you made is something I'm thinking about. What chance of success here does Huawei have of this becoming as you have iOS and Android in sort of outside of China? What chances does Huawei have of Harmony OS next becoming the standard almost in China? Oh, yeah, good, good question. Well, maybe comes down to that point I just mentioned about licensing, right. If it can license it to its own hardware competitors within China who, you know, let's, let's say what if it is a scenario where they have to, for whatever reason, for geopolitical reasons, what if they have no other choice but to license it?

It may very well go down to that kind of a scenario. I think at this point though, the realistic scenarios were not quite there yet. You look at the market today, you look at all of those other phone vendors that we talked about earlier, they're fully in Android. Granted in China, they're also using open source Android without those Google services. But nonetheless, there's just so much critical mass there that is still sitting there that it is difficult for a third OS to kind of dislodge that. Could that change in whatever five, ten years from now? Maybe, for all we know. Let's, you know, what if geopolitics changes within the next year?

Right. Maybe it could happen sooner than that, but I think at this point the bet would be that the existing momentum still stands and certainly outside of China, I mean, very slim chance of this. Exactly. I would agree with you on that. There's outside of China, it doesn't make sense for this, and rightly so. That's why Huawei is prioritized on the local market. Fantastic stuff, Brian.

That's all we've got time for. But before we let you go, let's do stat of the week. I think I'm just going to throw random currencies out and see if Brian can convert them on the fly. My fingers are going on the keyboard now. Just repeat the stat of the week. 19,999 Chinese yuan, which Brian rightly said is around US$2,800. So, Brian, you can go. You could as get as the guest. You can choose to go first or second with your, with your answer.

Well, so I'm supposed to guess what that number ties to? Yes, I'll go. I already have a guess. So I'll take, I'll take the option to go first. Yeah, yeah, perfect. Is it the price of the Huawei Mate xt? Great. And Tom, your guess, the price of a. The latest Apple smartphone. We have a winner. It's not you though, Tom, it's Brian. Spot on. Brian. That is the price of the, the Mate xt.

I mean, just on that point, how astronomical a value for that phone. Are phones just going to keep going up in price? Well, I mean, I think they're also doing this as kind of that trophy product to show off to the rest of the world how great how much technical prowess there is. And again, to that point about the homegrown pride. Right. I mean, it's fueling that for practical purposes. My understanding is that's probably going to be a pretty fragile device. I don't know how practical it really is going to be.

But I also understand that on the aftermarket, this going for multiple times of that price right now, just because of, you know, it's, it's just so differentiated, so different. So out of interest, where does Apple's latest smartphone in China price at less than that? Well, it depends on the configuration. Right. I mean, it's not that different from the rest of the world. In fact, in some cases actually a little cheaper than the rest of the world. Right, yeah, Just a quick look as we're looking in on ebay in the UK, the Huawei Mate XT tri fold is being listed for near close to 4,000pounds. So, yeah, there you go. Right. I don't know where it's coming from. Who's got, who's got a spare four grand, but yeah, there we go.

If you want One in the UK, £4,000. There you go. Brilliant stuff. All right, Brian, thank you so much for all your insight today. That's it for this episode. Before we go, please follow and subscribe to the show and you can even leave us a review. And if you want to contact Arjun and I or have a question about this episode or a past episode, then email us@beyondthevalleymc.com thank you, Brian. Yep. Thanks for having me. Great chatting. Thank you, Arjun. Thank you, Tom. We'll be back next week for another episode of beyond the Valley. Goodbye.

Technology, Business, Innovation, Huawei, Operating Systems, Ai Features, Cnbc International