(Asian Tech Press) U.S.-blacklisted Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., has formally launched its long-proclaimed HarmonyOS.
Huawei officially launched HarmonyOS 2.0 and a range of new products powered by it on Wednesday evening, CST, a move to bring HarmonyOS-powered phones to market as full-fledged products. The new operating system will realize the connection among different terminal devices such as cell phones, computers, tablets, and smart wearables.
For the positioning of the new operating system, Richard Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said at the launch event, "What we offer is not just a product, but a new way of life. HarmonyOS is a unified language in the era of the Internet of things (IoT)."
"Beyond the era of Android, HarmonyOS is the most powerful operating system in the IoT era. We will build smart scenes for the next 10 years," Yu added.
At the conference, Huawei announced that it had donated the core infrastructure of HarmonyOS to the Open Atom Open Source Foundation, where all smart service providers have equal access to the code and can make products according to different business requirements.
It shows that HarmonyOS, bearing Huawei's ambition to achieve the IoT, signals the company's focus on the mobile side to software and device ecology.
The official debut of HarmonyOS, drew wide acclaim in China, with almost all media and netizens expressing optimism about the future of HarmonyOS. However, there was also some controversy in society about the new operating system.
The biggest controversy is whether HarmonyOS has "copied" Android or not, and how much innovation there is in the Huawei-developed operating system.
Previously, a public relations officer, who was from Huawei's rival Oppo, had commented about HarmonyOS on China's Twitter-like Weibo. He directly said that Oppo will not use Huawei's new operating system, because it is essentially an Android in a different shell, developed by the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
The officer stressed that using HarmonyOS, phone suppliers would be "stuck" by their rival Huawei. While with Android, they would not be in the hands of Google.
Later, due to the pressure of public opinion, the Oppo employee apologized to the affected people and firms through Weibo for inappropriate comments, and then resigned.
After upgrading to HarmonyOS, in comparison with Android previously used, many Huawei users found that in addition to slightly better fluency, the overall experience is not very different. This led to HarmonyOS looking a lot like Android.
However, some people explain that HarmonyOS uses ASOP to be compatible with Android in order not to affect the user experience.
A Chinese cell phone manufacturer also said, "I think they are copying the homework and rewriting Android in their own understanding and way. Metaphorically speaking, Android is a string of Arabic numbers ’123456789‘, while HarmonyOS is that of traditional Chinese numerals used in finance, '壹贰叁肆伍陆柒捌玖'. Both things have the same effect, just express themselves differently."
According to the public information, HarmonyOS is developed based on ASOP, and adopts the Android Runtime, framework, and virtual machine, to do the recompilation and package. Systems like LineageOS, Xiaomi's MIUI, Samsung's One UI, etc., belong to this category. But the difference with this type is that HarmonyOS adds Huawei's self-developed LiteOS kernel and does not install Google Mobile Services (GMS).
Regardless of what HarmonyOS actually is, its appearance is of great significance to China at a time of intense China-US rivalry.
A commentary from China state media Global Times argues that the launch of HarmonyOS is undoubtedly a desperate comeback and transcendence forced by the U.S. crackdown on Huawei and Chinese tech companies. The media outlet said it expects the market will have a positive reaction to the new system.
In the review, Global Times spoke highly of the emergence of HarmonyOS, which would be the real start of breaking the monopoly of Android and Apple on the terminal operating system (TOS) for smart devices.
Some Chinese cell phone manufacturers may worry that if they install HarmonyOS, they will be "kidnapped" by Huawei. It should be said that such a concern is understandable. But the fact is that all those manufacturers are now kidnapped by Google, the owner of Android. Without HarmonyOS, Washington could order Google to terminate contracts with other Chinese manufacturers at any time, just like it has sanctioned Huawei.
The Chinese government is perfectly capable of ensuring fairness in its own market and not allowing Huawei to use its dominant position over HarmonyOS to the detriment of other manufacturers. The U.S. threat to China's tech industry, on the other hand, is a lasting one.
The real game is between China and the US. What HarmonyOS will trigger is an unprecedented game between China and the U.S., and should never be an internal fight among Chinese manufacturers.
The success or failure of HarmonyOS is no longer just a matter of Huawei, but a common fight that the entire Chinese mobile Internet industry cannot afford to lose.
Perhaps, Global Times' comment officially represents the true meaning of HarmonyOS's appearance in China.
