Can Huawei’s Blockchain-Ready Smartphone Make an Impact?

It is evident blockchain technology will continue to make headlines for quite some time to come. Whether or not that will lead to innovative projects is a different matter altogether. Huawei, the smartphone manufacturer, is looking to build a blockchain-ready smartphone in the future. It’s an ambitious project, albeit one that won’t make sense to most people on the planet today.

The Blockchain-ready Smartphone

While one has to commend Huawei for taking an innovative approach in the world of smartphones, this new business venture may not make much sense to most people. Considering that Huawei is the world’s third-biggest handset maker, any decision it makes will certainly be scrutinized.  

The Huawei blockchain-ready smartphone can run blockchain apps. This doesn’t sound innovative by any means, as virtually all current smartphones can run blockchain apps and cryptocurrency wallets already. The bigger question is how Huawei will differentiate itself in this regard, as it seems that will require a bit more work.

Under the hood, this new smartphone contains the Sirin OS. That is the current plan of action, anyway, assuming Huawei can execute the necessary licensing agreements to do so. Sirin Labs’ operating system is designed for running blockchain applications alongside the Android ecosystem.  This hybrid approach sounds pretty interesting, but it remains to be seen if users will take a liking to it.

Assuming this device ever comes to market, it will be the first major smartphone to tap into the blockchain market officially. As we have seen in the past, however, there is very little interest in using operating systems other than Android and iOS right now. Even Blackberry and Windows for mobile have not been overly successful, and thus it remains to be seen how Sirin OS will fare.

Additionally, one has to wonder how many people are looking for ways to access blockchain applications from their smartphones. Right now, such demand seems to be rather small, as the blockchain industry is still in the very early stages of development. Until we see more real-world use cases for this technology, it seems doubtful Sirin OS will make an impact outside of the cryptocurrency community.

This news comes at an interesting time, as Sirin Labs is also working on issuing its own smartphone, known as the Finney. This phone will cost as much as $1,000, which would make it even more expensive than the iPhone X. For a niche market, it seems that price is quite steep, although it remains to be seen how things will play out. For now, the demand for blockchain-ready smartphones seemingly isn’t there, but things can always change.