Beijing, Amid fears of getting cut off from the Android systems due to the US-China trade war, Chinese tech giant Huawei on Friday launched its own operating system called HarmonyOS or HongMeng in Chinese.
Introducing the software in China’s Dongguan city, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, said that HarmonyOS is “completely different from Android and iOS”.
“It is a microkernel-based, distributed OS that delivers a smooth experience across all scenarios. It has trustworthy and secure architecture, and it supports seamless collaboration across devices,” he said.
“You can develop your apps once, then flexibly deploy them across a range of different devices,” said Yu.
Huawei is the world’s second-largest smartphone seller in the world after Samsung, but the US-China trade tensions raised questions about the company’s continued access to the Android systems in the future.
The Donald Trump administration in May put Huawei on the Entity List that restricted US companies from selling technology products to the Huawei.
And ever since Google suspended the company’s Android license, there has been speculation about Huawei coming up with its own operating system thought to be crucial for the survival of its smartphone business.
“We’re entering a day and age where people expect a holistic intelligent experience across all devices and scenarios. To support this, we felt it was important to have an operating system with improved cross-platform capabilities,” Yu said.
“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,” he added.
HarmonyOS is a lightweight, compact operating system with powerful functionality, and it will first be used for smart devices like smart watches, smart screens, in-vehicle systems, and smart speakers, Huawei said.
Through this implementation Huawei aims to establish an integrated and shared ecosystem across devices.
Huawei said the HarmonyOS will address underperformance challenges with a Deterministic Latency Engine and high-performance Inter Process Communication (IPC).
The Deterministic Latency Engine sets task execution priorities and time limits for scheduling in advance.
The success of HarmonyOS will depend on a dynamic ecosystem of apps and developers. To encourage broader adoption, Huawei will release HarmonyOS as an open-source platform, worldwide.
Huawei said it will also establish an open-source foundation and an open-source community to support more in-depth collaboration with developers.
“We believe HarmonyOS will revitalize the industry and enrich the ecosystem,” said Yu.
“Our goal is to bring people a truly engaging and diverse experience. We want to invite developers from around the world to join us as we build out this new ecosystem. Together, we will deliver an intelligent experience for consumers in all scenarios,” he adedd.
