Huawei unveils new operating system

Huawei Technologies unveiled HarmonyOS, its new operating system, at the Huawei Developer Conference on Friday. The China-developed system, Hong Meng in Chinese, has been under development since 2017. 

It is claimed to offer greater working efficiency, a user-friendly developer environment, open source and higher-level security than other systems. 

It can work on various devices including smartphones, tablets, smart home devices and cars, said Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business.

“The new system won’t replace Android soon, but it can work any time from now if we can’t use Android one day,” Yu said.

The system connects everything and opens up a trillion-dollar market, which is the catalyst for all technology in the future, Yu added.

HarmonyOS represents China’s self-developed achievement on smartphone system and it’s meaningful for China to cut technology reliance on other countries, said Roger Sheng, an analyst with research firm Gartner. 

Huawei was added to US "Entity List" since 2018, which forbids US tech firms like Google and Intel offering chips and systems to it, unless with special permission. It forced Huawei to develop its own new systems.

By the first half, Huawei’s smartphone sales hit 118 million units globally, a 24 percent growth year on year. It also offered systems for 140 million smart devices with 260 brands and partners. The huge volume of sales allowed Huawei to build a new ecosystem.

Huawei’s strong ecosystem and 5G technology will popularize VR (virtual reality) and other high-tech applications in the education sector, both in domestic and overseas markets, said Xiong Li, CEO of NetDragon. 

Fuzhou-based NetDragon, which is in the interactive education and game business, is “willing and ready to adopt” HarmonyOS. It hopes to make VR education more interactive, user-friendly and affordable with technology development, said Xiong.

Xiong is one of 6,000 developers from all over the world attending the three-day conference, which is hearing about the latest technologies and global ecosystem development under the "Rethink Possibilities” theme.