Huawei's new mobile operating system (OS), in part the result of trade restrictions levied against China by the US, could be a huge opportunity for app developers seeking to tap the Chinese market.
After Google took away Huawei's Android licence for new smartphones, Huawei has been developing its own OS for its smartphones, a project it started in 2012.
Panutat Tejasen, founder of Chiang Mai Maker Club and a mobile app developer, said the trade war will lead to more choices in OSs, with Apple's iOS, Google's Android and Huawei's Hongmeng or Ark OS giving mobile developers a path into the Chinese market.
Hongmeng OS is expected to support not only smartphones but also internet-connected devices like cars, home appliances, or other Internet of Things (IoT) products.
"With 5G and artificial intelligence [AI], China has its own ecosystem that has a large market to attract developers," Mr Panutat said.
He said the Hongmeng OS took only one day to become widespread globally in light of the trade war, with 1 billion users ready to use it.
Hongmeng is expected to be open to other Chinese smartphone makers that might be concerned about relying on Google.
The new OS will be open to foreign mobile apps, specifically targeting Chinese users as it needs support from the international market to attract users globally.
Twitter took 24 months to acquire its first 1 million users, Facebook took 13 months, Dropbox seven months, Spotify five months and Instagram 2.5 months.
Mr Panutat said there are still opportunities to attract foreign factories from China to Thailand, particularly in the Eastern Economic Corridor where factories have more tax incentives.
Thanachart Numnonda, executive director of IMC Institute, an emerging tech training and research hub, said the Hongmeng OS will grab the attention of developers as there are a billion people who already use Chinese-made smartphones.
According to IDC Worldwide Quarterly Tracker, three of the top five smartphone manufacturers in terms of market share are from China.
Huawei ranked fourth at 19% behind Vivo at 23.2%, Samsung at 23.1% and Oppo has 23.1%. Apple had 11.7% and Xiaomi 8%.
"Chinese-made smartphones are more affordable so they can attract users away from Google services," he said.
Meanwhile, there are a variety of IoT devices that will use the Hongmeng OS similar to how Android runs on many connected devices other than smartphones.
China has also been developing AI for the OS to make it more attractive to developers.
The new OS might spend 1-2 years gaining momentum, which will change the competitive landscape where Samsung and Nokia are the only two brands that use Android. Google will be affected the most, unlike Apple which has its own system, iOS.
Sittiphol Phanvilai, a software developer pioneer who worked in the US, said the new OS might not be accessible to Thai mobile app developers as China has a closed ecosystem.
The opportunities could be limited for smartphones as the market is already saturated, except for apps that leverage use of AI like Google's Assistant, said Mr Sittiphol.
He sees an opportunity to widen the business cases for IoT and AI applications, such as in agriculture to analyse crop yields.
Cloud and big data analytics providers will benefit from the upcoming 5G technology.
Mr Sittiphol said Thailand does not have a strong culture of developing its own products and innovations, and sees Thai tech companies getting into connection procurement decisions rather than specification and performance of products.
"It is hard to deny that Thailand already is dominated by Chinese capital as the government promotes such investment and Thailand has quite a close relationship with China," said Pawoot Pongvitayapanu, chief executive and founder of Tarad.com.
"The new Chinese-made OS might be created to lessen the impact, however, as Huawei's new OS might create more application testing tasks for mobile app developers."