Thanks for this insight

I don't personally trust Huawei to behave responsibly. But I don't really trust any other company either. Android is basically a Google anti-privacy play.

Western IP law is arguably just a tool to delay Chinese progress (speaking from an international perspective). A Chinese company ignoring it doesn't really tell us much about how the company will behave towards its customers.

Nope. Android is a mobile OS and is pretty well done versus the many other oses it replaced.

> Western IP law is arguably just a tool to delay Chinese progress (speaking from an international perspective)

I'm pretty sure IP law wasn't created to "slow down Chinese progress". It is there to provide an incentive for invention and creativity. The whole point is to grant a limited time where an inventor can profit with minimal competition so it slows everyone's progress. But to say IP law targets China is at best mistaken.

In order for developing countries to develop, they have to jump out this loop. With the exponential development of technology, the absolute gap between developing world and developed world will be so huge that they will never have a chance of reaching the same level.

Note that despite the argument that IP law promotes invention and creativity Huawei is a world leading tech innovator in 4G. Despite obviously having little respect for IP law. They'll probably discover the importance of IP law now that they have taken the lead but it IP law appears to have been more of a hindrance in getting the innovation started.

Yes, that is the whole point. IP gives an inventor a reward in the form of limited or no competition for a period of time.

> it doesn't tell us how a Chinese company will treat their customers.

This is like saying your wearing the wrong running shoes to swim five miles.

It is easy to see how a company could believe that and also believe in treating their customers well. It would be a very competitive company.

> This is like saying your wearing the wrong running shoes to swim five miles.

I don't follow your point but I agree would be foolish to wear running shoes while swimming.

That's uncharitable. Android effectively started as a pro-web play: a way to ensure Google could deliver their services to mobile users regardless of what mobile manufacturers wanted (we're talking Nokia and Blackberry, which dominated the sector at the time and, together with phone carriers, could dictate what would or would not get to phones). They later got greedy with data-siphoning, but Apple effectively does the same, they're just a bit shy about over-exploiting it.