HUAWEI Backup hits the Play Store, foreshadows future decoupling of EMUI

One of the largest contributing factors to the increased fragmentation of the Android ecosystem is that updates take forever to roll out to such a wide variety of devices. Every time a new update comes down the pipe, smartphone makers have to scramble to update as many devices as possible to the new version. This is a massive undertaking, but some OEMs are starting to get smart about it. By publishing system apps on the Play Store, they can focus on update the core OS and update apps separately. Now it looks like HUAWEI is jumping on this bandwagon.

Their first app to hit the Google Play Store is HUAWEI Backup, a convenient little tool that does exactly what you would think it does: backup all of your personal and application data. What’s interesting about this development isn’t so much the app itself, but rather what it seems to foreshadow for the company. Taylor Wimberly of HUAWEI announced today via a Google+ post that if user response was positive, the company would continue to decouple system apps from their EMUI software and make them available on the Play Store.

With the publication of this system app, HUAWEI joins the like of Google, HTC, Motorola, Sony, and several others who are attempting to make their custom operating systems more modular for easier updating. Looking way down the line with the rollout of Android N, this practice could combine well with the speculated ambition of the newest version of Android to make the OS itself more modular, in a sense, hopefully beginning a long-scale solution for the fragmentation of the ecosystem. While we wait around to see how this trend pans out, head down to the comments and let us know your thoughts on this issue.