After months of conflicting remarks from Huawei executives, the Chinese networking giant on Friday officially unveiled HarmonyOS, a mobile operating system it has built to power smartphones and smart home devices as the company attempts to cut its reliance on international giants.
HarmonyOS will be made available for smart screen products such as TV later this year, said Richard Yu, CEO of the Huawei consumer division at company’s developer conference. In the next three years, Huawei, the world’s second largest smartphone vendor, will look to bring HarmonyOS to more devices, he said.
The availability of the mobile operating system, which is open source, will be limited to China for now, though the company has plans to bring it to international markets at a later stage.
The announcement today comes months after the U.S. government put Huawei and more than 60 affiliates in an entity list, restricting U.S. firms from conducting businesses with the Chinese giant. In the aftermath, Google, Intel, and other companies that contribute much of the technology and solutions that go into a smartphone suspended their business with Huawei.
The ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China has already started to impact Huawei’s bottom line. According to research firm Counterpoint, about half of all Huawei smartphones are shipped outside China.
The company reiterated today that it intends to continue to use Android moving forward, but HarmonyOS is officially its back up plan if things go south.
More to follow…