After months of speculations, especially in the wake of US government sanction on its products that led to Google cutting off ties, Huawei has announced its plan to Introduce its own operating system called HarmonyOS.
At the Huawei Developer Conference in Dongguan, China, where the announcement was made, Richard Yu, CEO of the company’s Consumer Business Group, talked about a wide-ranging potential for the new operating system.
“We needed an OS that supports all scenarios, that can be used across a broad range of devices and platforms, and that can meet consumer demand for low latency and strong security,” Yu said.
Although there had been rumors that Huawei was planning to replace the Android operating system on its smartphones and tablets, the company said that HarmonyOS would first be used to power smart devices such as smart TV, speakers and watches. However, the graphics presentation at the event also included, not just watches, cars and televisions, but also smartphones.
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During the conference, Huawei's Richard Yu, said that the new operating system is completely different from Android and Apple's iOS. However, like Android, but unlike iOS, HarmonyOS would be an open-source platform, that is, anybody could take the software code and use it however they want. With this approach, developers can create one version of their apps and then "flexibly deploy them across a range of different devices".
However, HarmonyOS will face the same problems that befell Windows Phone and Samsung Tizen and other aspiring Android and iOS alternatives. Despite Huawei's promise to make a multi-billion dollar investment to get app makers on board. It would be hard to convince them to develop software for HarmonyOS without guarantee that people will buy the devices. Moreover, they already have their hands full developing software for the more popular Android and iOS.
While there’s no reason to doubt that Huawei can put
HarmonyOS on a smartphone, the mere presence of an operating system doesn’t make a device usable. Without apps, no one buys the devices. If people don't want the devices, developers don’t bother tailoring apps.
Nevertheless, Huawei said it aims to focus on developing HarmonyOS on its homeland China where it has more users to its products, with plans to expand availability globally in the future. In China, the new operating system will be called HongmengOS.
Given the sustained tensions with the US and having being cut off from Android ecosystem, it seems inevitable that Huawei would consider developing its own operating system as a viable alternative. Still as Ben Wood from the CCS Insight consultancy noted: "Replacing [or] displacing Android is a virtually impossible task."
Indeed the majority of smartphones around the world are powered by Google's Android. Losing the Android licence could make Huawei's phones less appealing to consumers and hurt its business.
Even rival phone makers, Samsung, who also have its own operating system, realize the importance of Android and so utilize it on its flagship.
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