GUANGZHOU, China – In mid-2019, Huawei launched its own operating system – HarmonyOS – in response to U.S. actions that isolated it from Google software.
It was the Chinese technology giant’s most ambitious mobile software push, which it hoped would help its cell phone business survive.
On Monday, Huawei announced that HarmonyOS would start rolling out on its smartphones from April. Huawei phone users will be able to download it as an update.
A spokesman confirmed to CNBC that users outside of China could also download it. The company’s new Mate X2 folding device, released on Monday, would be one of the first to have HarmonyOS with other devices to follow.
In 2019, Huawei was placed on a U.S. blacklist known as the List of Entities, which restricted U.S. companies from exporting technology to the Chinese company. As a result, Google severed ties with Huawei. This meant that Huawei could not use the Google Android licensed on its smartphones. This is no big deal in China, where Google apps, like Gmail, are blocked. But in international markets, where Android is the most popular operating system, it was a major blow.
This measure by the Trump administration, combined with sanctions aimed at cutting the supply of essential chips to Huawei, hurt the Chinese telecommunications company’s smartphone sales.
Huawei will need to find a source of chip supplies for its smartphones. But HarmonyOS is the other “critically important” part of ensuring the survival of Huawei’s smartphone business, according to Nicole Peng, an analyst at Canalys.
HarmonyOS development
Huawei touts HarmonyOS as an operating system that can work on multiple devices, from smartphones to TVs. In September, it launched the second version of HarmonyOS and has been courting developers to make applications for the platform.
And with a view to international users, Huawei redesigned the interface of its app store known as AppGallery and improved the navigation functions.
A guest holds her phone showing a photo taken during Huawei’s press conference unveiling her new HarmonyOS operating system in Dongguan, Guangdong province, on August 9, 2019.
Fred Dufour | AFP | Getty Images
“Search integrated with AppGallery will help a lot in terms of helping people discover apps,” said Peng.
In addition, Huawei will push the update to existing users of its devices, which should help boost the use of the operating system abroad.
Currently, Huawei’s AppGallery has more than 530 million monthly active users.
Future smartphone challenges
Applications are essential for mobile operating systems. Apple’s iOS and Google Android are the two most dominant operating systems because they have millions of developers making apps for their respective platforms.
Huawei has an application package like mapping and a browser under a banner called Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). HMS is similar to Google Mobile Services and offers kits for developers that can be used to integrate things like location services into applications. HMS has 2.3 million registered developers globally.
And in China, it is capable of bringing popular applications on board.
However, in international markets, Huawei may face some challenges. For example, your app store is missing important names like Facebook or Google apps, which are important for users abroad.
“If Huawei wants to succeed in selling phones abroad, then it needs the right apps, which are unlikely to reach HarmonyOS. Therefore, getting access to Google’s mobile services again is critical if it wants to build its international phone business,” Bryan Ma, vice president of device research at IDC, said by email.
With Google Android and iOS dominating outside of China, Huawei will also have the arduous task of convincing users to change.
“In terms of challenges, there are still areas … (if) the product will be able to be accepted by heavy users using, for example, Google applications and services,” said Peng of Canalys.
Meanwhile, Huawei also lacks the main supplies to manufacture phones in the future, due to the United States’ move to cut it out of chips. Huawei’s Mate X2 uses the Kirin 9000 processor owned by Huawei. Richard Yu, the consumer sector CEO, said the company has enough production capacity for the foldable phone, even after warning last year that supplies could run out.
This, together with the uncertainty of success with the operating system, is a major challenge that Huawei faces.
“Huawei could continue to boost China’s local market without such concerns (about HarmonyOS apps), but there is a much bigger problem because it is struggling to get components in the first place,” said Ma.