It’s happening. Huawei is ditching Android and replacing it with an in-house developed open-source OS of their own. The HongmengOS, or the HarmonyOS is coming to smartphones on December 18, well on schedule, just like the company announced last month.
A phone leaker on Weibo (a Chinese microblogging platform) reports that Huawei will start rolling out beta versions of HarmonyOS for developers to test on Huawei phones in mid-December. The company has plans to migrate existing and new phones to HarmonyOS in early 2021. By the second quarter, 90% of their models will be running the new operating system.
Ever since the trade ban in 2018, it has been a bumpy ride for Huawei. They lost the entire U.S. market, access to American companies including Google, and even their Kirin chipsets. But Huawei is not ready to fade into obscurity just yet.
Both Microsoft and Samsung failed at their own operating systems and switched to Android. And HarmonyOS will have to go against the same Android and iOS for the market share. It’s too early to predict if Huawei will be able to pull it off, but unlike the locked-down Windows, HarmonyOS is open-source — just like Android.
With complete control over both the hardware and software, Huawei can offer better performance and seamless connectivity across multiple devices. More to the point, it’s expected to support Android apps. So even though Huawei is creating the OS from scratch, they still have plenty of ground covered.
Plus, Huawei is making it a distributed operating system, meaning it can run on any smart device — everything from your phone to your car. Their strategy is to build an operating system from the ground up, designed for every smart device in Huawei’s ecosystem. But that’s not to say it’s going to be easy. Even if the new OS takes off, Huawei still has to address the trust and privacy concerns that got them banned in the first place.
