Huawei is planning to launch its own operating system next year. The Chinese company is doing this in order to reduce reliance on other providers like Google’s Android. The company will be trying to replace the Android operating system on Huawei devices. The company is also facing some serious accusations from the US government.
The Harmony OS was first unveiled to the public in 2019 at a time when the company was facing flak in United States and Google was restricted to provide its services to the Chinese company. Huawei’s proprietary HarmonyOS was pitched as a multi-device platform across watches, laptops and mobiles.
According to a report by Reuters, analysts say it is the closest solution to a replacement that Huawei has, after its addition to the U.S. entity list in May last year, which barred Google from providing technical support for new Huawei phone models using Android, and from Google Mobile Services (GMS), the bundle of developer services upon which most Android apps are based.
The report also claims Huawei’s consumer business group CEO Richard Yu and Wang Chenglu, president of Huawei’s consumer business group’s software department gave an update on Thursday to the company’s annual developer conference in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan.
“The milestone we’re marking is that we’re supporting Huawei devices from Harmony OS 2.0, but at the same time Harmony OS 2.0 may also be available to other vendors’ devices,” Wang said. “Harmony OS 2.0 will be available to all hardware manufacturers.”
Yu added that the company had also opened to developers a beta version for smart TVs, watches and car infotainment systems from Thursday, and plans to make it available for smartphones in December.
“The development of HarmonyOS and HMS is fascinating. Nevertheless, this development will need hardware to deliver to the consumers. Thus, the biggest challenge is still coming from the chips supply disruption,” said Will Wong, an analyst with consultancy IDC.
