I don't think any Chinese company can pull the privacy card. They're bound by their government to spy on their customers just like American ones are.

Otherwise Huawei would have already jumped into that gap. They have their own Google-independent OS now so they could have marketed it to privacy enthusiasts where the lack of Google services would have been a positive not a negative.

> Xiaomi or someone else goes all in on “privacy focused android” in absence of pixel+graphene combo

Xiaomi? Privacy?

> Apple really cashed in on privacy for a few years

Apple didn't "cash in", their marketing dept made sure privacy/security engineering got just enough budget to pull off miracles & then spend even more to successfully make the public forget about the very nasty Celebgate.