China’s Huawei Technologies started to roll out its newly made and proprietary operating system called the Harmony operating system (HarmonyOS) for smartphones starting Wednesday. This is a part of the efforts of the embattled company to recover from the hit to its smartphone business because of sanctions imposed on it by the United States almost two years ago.
Starting Wednesday, owners and users of the company’s smartphones will have the opportunity to switch from the current operating system which is based on Google’s Android platform to the company’s HarmonyOS.
With the roll out of the HarmonyOS, Huawei will now not have to rely on the Android system to run its smartphones. The company had been banned from accessing technical support to new Huawei phone models by Alphabet Inc’s Google as well as to Google Mobile Services which comprises of a host of developer services which forms the basis for most of the Android apps because of the US sanctions.
Huawei is projecting HarmonyOS as an ‘Internet-of-Things’ platform instead of it being pitted as a like-for-like replacement for Android and this new operating system by the company will be able to operate on and connect other devices such as laptops, smart watches, cars and digital appliances.
Wang Chenglu, president of Huawei Consumer Business Group’s software department and the person leading Huawei’s efforts to develop HarmonyOS since 2016, said that the target of Huawei is to be able to roll out HarmonyOS on 200 million smartphones and 100 million third party smart devices by the end of the current year.
Wang had made these comments at a media roundtable a day earlier.
Huawei, also the leading telephone equipment maker of the world, was placed in the so called US trade blacklist in May 2019 by the then Trump administration over concerns of the government for its national security form the use of the Chinese company’s products. Huawei has repeatedly denied it is a risk.
The handset business of the Chinese firms was put under severe pressure because of the US sanctions. It dropped from being the biggest smartphone maker of the world prior to the sanctions to being placed sixth globally with a global market share of just 4 per cent as of the first quarter of the current year.
But with the roll out of HarmonyOS, the company was targeting beyond smartphones, Wang said. Growth in the smartphone market has become stagnant he said and added that smartphones are still the dominant device in people’s lives primarily because app developers gave very few other platform options to develop apps for.
Wang said that instead of smartphones, there was a need for a system that can help to bridge the gap between various forms of devices.
“The problem with existing operating systems is that devices can’t be connected easily,” with users often having to download separate apps to get things to connect, Wang said.
“But Harmony can enable devices to be connected to form a super device. It will work as one file system, literally one device,” Wang added.
(Source:www.fxempire.com)
Starting Wednesday, owners and users of the company’s smartphones will have the opportunity to switch from the current operating system which is based on Google’s Android platform to the company’s HarmonyOS.
With the roll out of the HarmonyOS, Huawei will now not have to rely on the Android system to run its smartphones. The company had been banned from accessing technical support to new Huawei phone models by Alphabet Inc’s Google as well as to Google Mobile Services which comprises of a host of developer services which forms the basis for most of the Android apps because of the US sanctions.
Huawei is projecting HarmonyOS as an ‘Internet-of-Things’ platform instead of it being pitted as a like-for-like replacement for Android and this new operating system by the company will be able to operate on and connect other devices such as laptops, smart watches, cars and digital appliances.
Wang Chenglu, president of Huawei Consumer Business Group’s software department and the person leading Huawei’s efforts to develop HarmonyOS since 2016, said that the target of Huawei is to be able to roll out HarmonyOS on 200 million smartphones and 100 million third party smart devices by the end of the current year.
Wang had made these comments at a media roundtable a day earlier.
Huawei, also the leading telephone equipment maker of the world, was placed in the so called US trade blacklist in May 2019 by the then Trump administration over concerns of the government for its national security form the use of the Chinese company’s products. Huawei has repeatedly denied it is a risk.
The handset business of the Chinese firms was put under severe pressure because of the US sanctions. It dropped from being the biggest smartphone maker of the world prior to the sanctions to being placed sixth globally with a global market share of just 4 per cent as of the first quarter of the current year.
But with the roll out of HarmonyOS, the company was targeting beyond smartphones, Wang said. Growth in the smartphone market has become stagnant he said and added that smartphones are still the dominant device in people’s lives primarily because app developers gave very few other platform options to develop apps for.
Wang said that instead of smartphones, there was a need for a system that can help to bridge the gap between various forms of devices.
“The problem with existing operating systems is that devices can’t be connected easily,” with users often having to download separate apps to get things to connect, Wang said.
“But Harmony can enable devices to be connected to form a super device. It will work as one file system, literally one device,” Wang added.
(Source:www.fxempire.com)
Homepage
Send to a friend
Printable version
Share
