Chinese telecom and device giant Huawei has launched a new operating system called HarmonyOS. The Operating system called Hongmeng in Chinese can be used for different devices from phones to wearables to Speakers to IoT products. Richar Yu, CEO of Huawei Device announces the long-rumored OS at Huawei Developer Conference (HDC), Dongguan on Aug 9, 2019.
Yu also told the Huawei annual conference that the HarmonyOS would “bring more harmony and convenience to the world”.
Most people take the OS as Huawei’s Plan B to substitute Android in case they couldn’t use it in the future. The Chinese company had put the homemade OS to light by acknowledging its development on multiple occasions. Huawei says they intend to use Android for now, but it is not clear whether they can continue to do so. Earlier US has put Huawei in entity list, banning US companies like Google to use their software. Then they also put a relax on the restriction for 90 days which is going to complete soon.
Huawei will first put the HarmonyOS in smart screens first in China market. Then they will expand to use it for other devices like Wearables, in-vehicle software, Smart and IoT products. As China restricts the use of Google, they will strip Google apps from the Hongmeng OS in China. Then they will expand the OS on a global scale. Huawei has a three years plan for the expansion to the whole range of devices, in which smartphones don’t count for now. But definitely Huawei has it for pipeline.
HarmonyOS by Huawei
They say HarmonyOS is different than Android and iOS. Some see the OS as an direct competitor to Google’s upcoming OS Fuchsia. HarmonyOS is an open-source, microkernel-based distributed OS. The same OS can also be used by other companies and also developers. For a new OS to sustain and gain popularity also depends on the number and variety of apps available in the platform for which open source helps.
The harmony can be used for several ranges of devices with different screen size and layouts. Although they prefer to use Google’s Android OS, for now, they will definitely enable this OS for smartphones later. As per Yu, they will make the switching from Android to HarmonyOS as easy as it could get.
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