Who needs Google’s Android? Huawei trademarks its own smartphone OS

Huawei Technologies Co. is pinning its hopes on a self-designed operating system to replace Google’s Android following a US blacklisting. The question is: Can it succeed where others have failed?

Huawei last week was granted a trademark, “Hongmeng,” for the operating system by the trademark office of China’s National Intellectual Property Administration. The company has been working on the system under the code name “Project Z” as an insurance policy in case it lost access to American technology like Android, which powers Huawei’s popular smartphones, and hopes to release it later this year.

That scenario happened when Google was forced to cut off access to software after the US Commerce Department placed Huawei on its “entity list,” banning the transfer of U.S. technology to the Chinese company without a license, on the grounds of national security.