The Chinese tech behemoth is going to announce its new operating system strategy on 20 November, representing another step towards technological self-reliance
Huawei announced that it will make public the whole plan regarding HarmonyOS (or 'Hongmeng'; Chinese: 鸿蒙) – the company's in-house operating system – at the Global Technology Conference 2019 held by CNBC. This announcement set the scene for the Chinese tech giant to establish its own software ecosystem.
The new OS from Huawei comes after Google's decision to withdraw the Android license from the Chinese company, following a US government Executive Order in May 2019. Despite working on the system for years, the company took this recent situation as an opportunity to boost the development and release of HarmonyOS.
Liang Hua, Chairman of Huawei, revealed that after the arrival of 5G, market demand for smart electronic products is due to grow and that Huawei is making significant efforts to redesign its products and get prepared. Liang disclosed that HarmonyOS is a microkernel-based and distributed operating system usable across many of the devices in their portfolio, from smartphones to laptops or wearables. In compliance with Liang's point of view, 5G is an infrastructure needed to support the correct expansion of artificial intelligence utilization, allowing to hugely amplify the capacity of the digital economy promoting the development of all humankind.
Liang claims during a CNBC interview that Huawei's international strategy is to provide superior solutions and services to customers that have chosen their 5G network solutions. Liang also manifests that Huawei 5G system will start being deployed in China and expanded internationally in the future.
The Huawei Chairman's opinion coincides with that of Tang Hai, Chief Scientist of Standards Research Center of OPPO. Tang Hai also stated that the Pearl River Delta bay - Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau - would be an ideal place to start placing the 5G infrastructure program.
Feng Xingya, general manager of Guangzhou Automobile Industry Group, stated at the conference that GAC, Tencent, Huawei, and some other IT companies have jointly developed a driverless system called ADiGO. The system consists of four parts: an intelligent driving system, internet of things, big data, and a voice recognition platform. Feng claimed that this system offers remarkable improvements to self-driving experience and brings solutions to many safety concerns.
Regarding the reasons that brought Huawei to push resources towards HarmonyOS development, it appears to be that the company is determined to continue its operations without the reliance on US components or software. Furthermore, Huawei is going to win flexibility and autonomy by not depending on external providers for its key product segments.