Huawei reshaping mobile OS landscape

Yu Chengdong, executive director of Huawei, at the launch of the company's new mobile operating system on Tuesday in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. [Photo/Xinhua]

HarmonyOS Next may 'help China to reduce reliance on certain chips'

China's first homegrown and fully autonomous mobile operating system was launched by tech firm Huawei Technologies Co on Tuesday night, breaking the global OS landscape dominated by Google's Android and Apple's iOS systems.

The breakthrough is very likely to "extend beyond smartphones to devices like computers", which once again showed that the United States' suppression of China's tech sector will only fuel domestic drive for independent innovation, industry experts said.

Huawei's latest mobile operating system, HarmonyOS Next, is also dubbed a "pure-blood" version of Harmony, as it does away with roots to the Android system and will no longer support Android-based applications.

Yu Chengdong, executive director of Huawei, said that all of China's top 5,000 apps have developed native applications for the new system, and to date, more than 15,000 native applications have been launched.

"It only took Huawei a year to travel the path that foreign companies have been doing for a decade," Yu said, emphasizing that the number of devices supporting HarmonyOS has exceeded 1 billion, with 6.75 million registered developers.

According to him, the number of native applications is 10 times higher than in June, when Huawei released a beta version of HarmonyOS Next.

Han Juke, deputy head of the China Communications Industry Association, said that for the first time, China has achieved independent controllability of a domestic operating system, in terms of underlying architecture, connections and a more secure information protection mechanism.

"Huawei broke out of its cocoon and became a butterfly," Han said. "Such efforts not only demonstrate the country's determination in key technological breakthroughs, but also lay a solid foundation for the country's telecommunications industry in the future."

More than that, Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Information Consumption Alliance, said that "it is very likely that the system could extend beyond smartphones to devices like computers, therefore helping China to reduce reliance on certain chips".

"US' suppression of China's tech industry is counterproductive to global supply chains and will only cause harm to the US itself," Xiang emphasized. "Instead, these pressures will only fuel China's drive for more homegrown and independent technological breakthroughs."

Currently, HarmonyOS Next is available on a number of devices including Huawei's Mate 60 and Huawei Pura 70 series, among others, and will be available on more handsets next year, including its latest trifold Mate XT smartphone and mid-range Nova models, the company said.

However, industry experts also pointed out that Huawei's latest operating system still faces several challenges including with ecosystem partners on issues such as commission fees.

Wang Haoyu, CEO of Merit Asset Management, said: "Future success also requires strong ecosystem support and good market strategies. The next few years will be a critical period to test whether HarmonyOS Next can grow into a world-class operating system. Huawei and other ecosystem partners need to work together to ensure that it can stand out in the fierce market competition."