THE US has lost the war on Huawei. The Chinese tech giant will introduce its own operating system on Wednesday.
When the US government, under former president Donald Trump, tried to destroy Huawei, the company responded by innovating. The US ban on Huawei almost wiped out its cellphone business. Part of the ban focused on parts developed in the US or by its partners as well as its operating system, Android, which is partly developed by Google.
The operating system ban was probably the most lethal as it meant that Huawei could not confidently produce cellphones into the future as these would not be supported by Android. But the company was not shaken. Instead, it developed its own operating system, the HarmonyOS.
HarmonyOS, known as Hongmeng in Chinese, was unveiled in August 2019, three months after the US announced trade restrictions that barred Huawei from shipping new products with Google apps and services pre-installed.
The US’s hostile treatment inspired Huawei to innovate and, in the process, laid the ground for a significant change of the world’s operating systems.
Huawei new operating system will be the world’s third operating system and the first outside the US.
Currently, the world uses only two operating systems for the mobile phones in the market, one by Apple the iOS and another by Google, Android which is basically used by every other mobile phone which is not an Apple device.
Huawei HarmonyOS will become another key player in the mobile market. This new operating system will not only power cellphones but technology devices of the future.
HarmonyOS will be a future-proof distributed operating system adaptable to a mobile office, fitness and health, social communication and media entertainment, to name a few.
Unlike a legacy operating system that runs on a standalone device, HarmonyOS is built on a distributed architecture designed based on a set of system capabilities. It is able to run on a wide range of device forms, including smartphones, tablets, wearables, smart TVs, head units, PCs, smart speakers, earphones and AR/ VR glasses.
It is reported that the coming release of the operating system will focus on cellphones.
The introduction of the operating system is good news for Huawei cellphone users who were partly held hostage by the US ban.
The new operating system will unleash new innovations. The Huawei fan base who will welcome this development goes beyond consumers and users of cellphones, it will include an army of developers who will develop services and solutions for the Huawei operating system.
When Apple and Android introduced their own operating systems they also indirectly created the apps economy. New businesses were built on the back of apps by Apple and Google. The Huawei operating system will have the same and even a greater economic effect.
The fact that the new operating system by Huawei will power even cars in the future is an indicator of how powerful it will become.
The company’s first product running HarmonyOS was a smart TV released under its former budget brand Honor in 2019.
Last September, Huawei’s consumer business chief executive Richard Yu Chengdong said the second generation of HarmonyOS would be available on the company’s smartphones, smart speakers and earphones by this year, adding that more devices, such as virtual reality glasses, would be added to the ecosystem after next year.
Huawei has said it planned to deploy HarmonyOS on 400 million devices this year.
The HarmonyOS project is in line with Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei’s ambition for the company to develop more software to reduce the impact of US trade sanctions on its overall business.
When the Huawei founder announced that the tech company would develop its own operating system, many doubted the feasibility of such an idea. The ability of the company to pull this off will go down in the history of technology as one of the most impressive and outstanding achievements.
Huawei offers important lessons for Africa, on what it means to develop your own systems for independence.
The continent is in the same position that Huawei was in before developing its own system. On almost all tech-driven systems, Africa is dependent on other parts of the world. Huawei has shown that it’s possible to set what appears to be an impossible goal and achieve it.
Huawei offers important lessons for the African continent and businesses on what it means to develop your own systems for independence.
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