Huawei isn’t just back from the dead. It’s a force to be reckoned with

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Huawei is in the midst of one of the most stunning comebacks in the history of the tech industry.

The Chinese giant, which has been a flashpoint in the escalating rivalry between Washington and Beijing, says more than 900 million smartphones now use its in-house operating system Harmony OS.

“We have done in 10 years what our European and American counterparts have done in more than 30 years, and have achieved independent control of the core technology of the operating system,” Richard Yu, the chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, said at a developer forum on Friday.

Harmony, which is called “Hongmeng” in Chinese, was first unveiled in 2019, months after Huawei was placed on a US trade blacklist that barred American firms from selling tech and software to the Chinese tech company without a license.

US policymakers have long claimed that Huawei poses a national security risk, alleging that the Chinese government could use the company’s equipment to spy. The company repeatedly denied those allegations, but that didn’t stop some American allies — such as the UK — limiting Huawei’s role in building 5G networks.

The US ban prevented companies like Google (GOOGL) from supplying new Huawei devices with its version of Android OS. Those restrictions dealt a huge blow to the Chinese firm’s smartphone ambitions at the time, with some analysts predicting the Huawei phone would become “a brick.”

Now the company is once again making its way back to the top. It’s also venturing into new businesses. Last year, it launched an electric sedan to take on Tesla’s Model