Hint: It’s not Apple (or Google or Samsung)…
My partner, Gilman Louie, has been talking to us (our investors and partners) recently about the American competitive position vis a vis China: He has focused on issues around 5G deployment, adoption of AI, and development of hypersonic capabilities.
I have a personal anecdote I want to share, since I have the sense that it is a watershed moment that could have greater significance than my personal experience. That watershed moment: the Chinese company beat all of the other smartphone companies to market with the latest camera package in their phone. In my experience over the last 40+ years, it is signs like this that lead to fundamental changes: and that is that we should no longer think of China in the way that we have traditionally: China now leads in technology and is no longer just a follower of what happens elsewhere.
Apple iPhone 11 Max Pro
HuaWei P30 Pro
In May, I bought a Huawei P30 Pro smartphone. In September, four months later, I bought a iPhone 11 Pro Max smartphone. From my experience, I believe that the camera package on the Huawei phone is better and more advanced than the camera package on the iPhone (or the Google Pixel 4 or Samsung S10). Hmmm.
Don’t take my word for it. This is a review of the Huawei P30 Pro camera package by a site that does excellent reviews of… cameras! And here is the same organization’s initial review of the iPhone 11 Max Pro. Both cameras have an “intelligent system” that allows the phone to enhance an image before it is recorded. Apple’s is called Deep Fusion, a capability enabled in its proprietary processor; Huawei’s is called Super Resolution and uses a special, extra camera lens that can measure the distance from the camera to the subject and get precise depth of field information to enhance the photo. Indeed, this is a feature of both cameras called “Time Of Flight”, which is a method for measuring the distance from the camera lens to the subject that allows the camera to know how to enhance different parts of the photo for lighting and depth of field. (Worthy also to note that Huawei licensed its optics from Leica, widely considered to be the best of the best in camera lenses, and put their logo on the back of their phone.)
As well, here is an excellent direct comparison of the two phones from C/NET that outlines exactly how the phones differ and why any one person might choose one or the other. The reviewer argues that is a matter of whether you trust the phone to accurately render the photo (iPhone) or to improve on it (Huawei).
Huawei’s is different because it has a special lenses for measuring Time Of Flight, while Apple uses its proprietary processor and software to do the same thing. The first time I noticed how different the Huawei was when my guide took this photo of me and my fish on the McCloud River in June of this past year. It was a bright, sunny day, and I was wearing a floppy hat with a broad brim. My usual experience is that either my face would be in the shade or the fish would be overexposed. In this case, the camera was smart enough to reduce the shadows on my face and, at the same time, show the fish as it would look in daylight. For the first time — ever, I didn’t have to choose between having a good fish photo and having a nice fishy selfie!
AT&T Billboard for iPhone 11 Pro
You may have noticed that Apple’s entire marketing campaign for the iPhone 11 is based on their camera package. Billboards show the corner of the phone where the camera is located on the back. This is a really clear message from Apple that the key difference for this model of the iPhone is the camera, not the proprietary processor or the battery life or the screen or any of the other key aspects of the phone. Just the camera.
But Apple’s is not the best camera package in the market, at least im my humble opinion, so one must wonder if they knew that Huawei has something like this up their sleeve. Of course, once Huawei announced the P30, Apple would know. But product cycles, short as they are now, don’t allow for competitive technology moves at the last minute. And that’s not something you would imagine Apple doing, caring about another makers design enough to change their own.
I’ve been in the computer industry now since 1981. I’ve watched a lot of evolutions in the industry, where competitive positions have changed unexpectedly. IBM used to be consider unbeatable, a monopoly even, until Microsoft provided the operating for their personal computer and enabled hundreds of other companies to compete directly. Eventually, that lead to IBM losing its monopoly position. Regulators swung their attention to Microsoft as a monopoly, and then Microsoft losts its monopoly status when… Apple introduced the first smartphone and became the leadership company in smartphone design.
Microsoft, Google, Samsung and others have all taken a run at knocking off Apple’s leadership position, without any particular success. Google can be said to have had the most success, through its Android operating system, but it is still trying to get ahead of Apple in the hardware that hosts Android, in the form of the Pixel phones, now in their fourth generation. Samsung has sold more phones than anyone else, but struggles with the fact that their OS is supplied by a competitor, Google (as is true of both Samsung and Huawei).
It occurs to me that Huawei has managed to actually accomplish something remarkable: deliver a product that’s better than Apple’s ahead of Apple! That means that Huawei had figured out what the primary competitive issue would be in 2019 and developed an innovative approach to getting ahead at least 18 months ago.
Combine that with the issues my partner has raised in multiple domains, mostly related to national security, and it is no wonder that it is worth worrying about our competitive position vis-a-vis the People’s Republic of China. The truth is that our government is worried about our competitive position and is making it harder and harder for Huawei to do business in the United States. The price of the Huawei P30 Pro has dropped by half since I bought mine last May. Most people think that it’s illegal to own a Huawei phone, since the company was “banned” from doing business in the U.S.
Rolling Stones in concert at Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, CA
But that’s the government. Do you think Apple has noticed that Huawei stole a march on them? Or perhaps they think that their solution is better than Huawei’s? I’m still carring around the Huawei, without a SIM card in it, so I can only use it as a camera, not a phone, on Wifi networks. But I get consistently better photos in edge cases, even now that I’m using Apple’s latest and great. The Huawei does better in concerts, backlit, high-contrast situations, and other difficult photo environments. It’s a pain to carry two phones, particularly when you have the sense that the government of China is enjoying my photos as much as I am. That’s a pretty nice photo of the Rolling Stones, eh President Xi?