It's Not a GAFAM World Anymore and There Are Far More Operating Systems Than Google's, Apple's, and Microsoft's
It would hardly be controversial to say that the world is becoming multipolar as the main superpower (since the end of the World Wars) loses influence to various other countries or "blocs". In Asia the loss of "US leadership" is far too easy (and obvious to see). In Africa, as we pointed out 2 days ago, China gained a foothold economically and Russia militarily (US budget cuts have further accelerated this trend). Last month we said that Chinese operating systems were not getting recognition or credit. Maybe not in GAFAM-funded media anyway; those operating systems are GAFAM-free and created specifically because of the need to circumvent surveillance by GAFAM.
"The HarmonyOS operating system continues to break growth records," said a Huawei-aligned site just earlier this year, "and a new figure shows that its open source version has garnered a staggering 1.2 billion devices." Weeks ago they shared staggering numbers: "Interestingly, the company is currently adding 150,000 devices daily to its HarmonyOS ecosystem, including phones, tablets, wearables, smart home appliances, and PCs."
That's about a million per week or close to 55 million per year.
This isn't happening only inside China.
We see Windows at all-time lows in many countries such as Ethiopia and Bahrain (to name two among dozens of examples this month). statCounter does not count HarmonyOS, it's just classified as "Unknown" (or other).
So we're not getting the full picture of what's happening. █