Huawei wants to take homegrown HarmonyOS phone platform worldwide Huawei plans to expand its native HarmonyOS smartphone platform worldwide, despite coming under US-led sanctions that have deprived it of access to key technologies. The Chinese tech megacorp released its own phone platform in 2019, the same year that US sanctions blocked Huawei from having further access to Google's Android …
It's (extensively modified) forked Linux/Android, at least on Phones (it uses LiteOS for smaller things) - China doesn't build anything from scratch, it's always 'borrowed'.
The UI, which is probably what you'd actually care about, is quite similar to Android, though clunkier since it started as trying to clone early iOS using Android (all the apps on the home screen, no folders, etc.). It can do widgets and folders and cards now, but you can tell they're more interested in adding more features than actually fixing the UI. You can do Android apps through a compat layer, though you're supposed to go through the Huawei AppGallery to get 'native' HarmonyOS apps, and of course the native apps have access to all the other things Huawei's added to stock Android.
For sure try it out, but I don't think you'll be blown away. There's no major move away from Android or iOS here and I wouldn't say it's better than either. But not horribly worse, totally usable!
AFAIK it uses their own microkernel with an Android subsystem on top to run Android apps. And they're slowly replacing the Android subsystem with their own and prodding developers to make native versions of their apps for the operating system.
Since it's only partially open-source I don't see it going anywhere, at least not in the Western world.
The major move away is HarmonyOS NEXT. That is what the article is partly about.
That version completely removes the Android compatibility layer. Hence the push for native apps. It should arrive later this year.
Even current HarmonyOS systems with Android compatibility have seen one major upgrade. The entire networking stack was rebuilt to allow for a more robust and fast connection of devices.
HarmonyOS is a mult-kernel system but a HarmonyOS kernel is coming at some point.
LiteOS kernel was the base of some HarmonyOS devices. Especially the early ones although it was used on other devices prior to that. In fact, the security elements of HarmonyOS were first tested within LiteOS.
The printing press was invented in Europe (the Chinese had something similar but not quite).
Also, even then freedom of information was seen as dangerous in China so the idea never found much traction or was imply prohibited outside of government circles.This enabled Europe eventually to take the lead in science and technology.
I'm using EMUI/Android, Android, iOS and HarmonyOS at the moment in Europe.
For HarmonyOS to take root here Huawei needs bring more ecosystem devices over and showcase them. Especially things like its door locks, family storage solutions and TVs. And get HarmonyOS on its partnered cars over here too. And have NearLink glue the wireless part together.
Away from pure HarmonyOS phones, it needs to really beef up HMS cloud options for GMS and iOS based phones.
Although no one wants to admit it, MagicOS seems to be HarmonyOS in sheep's clothing so there is definitely a wedge there as Honor phones also run GMS (at least at the moment).
It's very doable but will require commitment and lots of marketing and that should start with branding and starting to call out the accusations and ask for proof.
Two Honor phones. One prior to the Honor spin off. The other post spin off so both have GMS. The post spin off phone has HMS too.
A 'pure' HarmonyOS tablet plus numerous wearables, routers, earbuds, headphones etc running HarmonyOS.
The iOS side of things is iPhone/iPad (the wife)m
No problem.
Huawei just needs to demonstrate that its OS isn't phoning everything to Beijing.
How I would like to be able to say : "like Android". Unfortunately, Android is already as bad as Beijing, so, again, why not ?
It's not like we are living in a civilization that respects our individual privacy. So, one more, one less . . .
“Now Huawei has set its sights on international expansion and intends to spend 2024 building up the native HarmonyOS app ecosystem, including bringing the most popular smartphone apps to its platform.”
If only Microsoft had thought to do that in 2015 with Window’s Mobile 10?? (and the closely related Windows RT). <shrugs>
@Pascal Monett - It can never prove this - the system is not designed to prove innocence.
Look at it this way - Huawei set up an organisation that worked with GCHQ in the UK to go through their source code line by line looking for any potential backdoors or security vulnerabilities called "The Cell" - the reason why I'm saying this is because it's public knowledge and you can look it up.
Up until the point it was shut down, 0 security issues/vulnerabilities were found - sure - some poor programming practices were found I believe - but I think every company is guilty of those.
Their network equipment still ended up being deemed "non grata" and was demanded to be ripped out by pretty much every Western nation.
Normally I believe in most Western countries, the legal impetus is to prove guilt rather than innocence - Huawei tried to prove their innocence as much as they could, yet this still didn't help.
This should tell you something if you listen carefully - the line hat is fed to you about fairness, justice, democracy and the truth should all be evaluated on the basis of what you hear/observe.
Are prime locations to expand HarmonyOS' footprint...
The App ecosystem in those regions (specially the local Apps like banking, delivery and Rideshare, just to name a few) is made of small local companies, not large global Juggernoughts beholden to the USoA and/or Europe. Also, being smaller, those local devs will be more willing to port in exchange for incentives (be it direct payment, marketing considerations or other somesuch). For the Meta's and Microsoft's of this world, thoce incentives are less valuable than bellybutton lint.
Knowing their MO (full disclosure, I was on Huawei's payroll for a year between 2007 and 2008, on the Telco side*), they will probably go that route, starting in the Middle East and LatAm (different cultures in each country, but a unifying language, like in their homemarket of china). Then they'll move to SE Asia (bigger population, more income), finally africa.
Of course, if there is a Fluke in a specific country (think a country which theorethically would rather be spied on by china rather than being spyed on by the 5 eyes, and whose leadership is myffed at the USoA because of "reasons") they will pounce on that gladly.
JM2¢ YMMV
* Only once in the late ''00s did a telco switch phoned home to china. It was on a global telco operating in my country (and many others, I said global). Huawei was dragged through the coals, said it was a mistake, no new incidents were recorded (from then until today, my country is small, we telco guys know each other), either in that country or in any of the other countries were said telco operated, so yes, probably a mistake of some sort, most likely a misconfigured remote management interface (the ones used for managed services).
Anon for evident reasons.
Actually there is the open source version of HarmonyOS which is already being worked on as the base of numerous projects (I wonder if the Oniro Project/Platform is still moving forward), including industrial and consumer IoT. Huawei's HiSilicon division is continuing to roll out IoT silicon along with audio/video/surveillance chipsets.
And HarmonyOS is the 'consumer' facing OS if you like. On the enterprise side they also have EulerOS.
They don't want an open source OS that their competitors could sell to Chinese users and people outside China still wouldn't buy. With one of their own, they can try to keep any additions to themselves, which means more buyers of their devices inside China. By the way, there's nothing unusual with that in the "Chinese mentality" area; Chinese companies are not well-known for universally caring about open source or trying to team up with one another, and that's true in nearly every industry. They can say all they like about wanting to export Harmony OS outside China, but I wouldn't expect it to work. Lots of companies have tried that, a couple of them putting plenty of money into the idea. They all failed.
There are only two ways that Harmony OS will catch on outside China:
1. Huawei just releases the current version of Harmony OS. That is to say, they release a standard Android phone and make sure it says "Harmony OS" on the start screen and settings app. Sure, it will have a Huawei app store and HMS running on it, but it's still Android. Even with this, I don't think it will work well, but there's a bit of a chance.
2. They seriously subsidize the devices to make them cheaper than all the competition, then aim for developing markets. If they don't get developers on board, they'll have to subsidize even more to get them below the KaiOS devices, and that's saying a lot.
I don't think they're going to do either of these, and therefore I think this attempt, if they're even serious about it, will go nowhere.
I think Huawei probably wants to build up their own closed ecosystem so they can control what happens on the platform a lot more than if it open source.
Given how China and Chinese tech is perceivd in much of the Western world why would they expend energy in trying to support a global market?
Both China and the US have isolationalist tendencies - so I suspect once China has become largely self sufficient, the shutters will come down
The US doesn't understand that a mobile phone is not all about whether the chip is 7nm or 3nm. They don't have much difference if not gaming intensive. It's more about interconnectivity and AI capabilities. The Chinese doesn't treat the mobile device individually, but part of mobile, car, business, and home all in one solution.
America will deem it/Huawei an even higher security threat, and either stop it from operating in the US and every other country they can influence or failing that - try to assassinate all the leaders (they have a rotating CEO who will myseriously die of a new reason every time one gets appointed)
I think last time they took one of the daughters of the CEO or something in custody for contravening regulations against selling stuff to Iran - meanwhile the US sees no issue in selling arms to a country in the Middle East which is actively committing the act of genocide.
With the US it's "do as I say and not as I do - or else"
"I think last time they took one of the daughters of the CEO or something in custody for contravening regulations against selling stuff to Iran"
Your views aside, it could be worth explaining that, while she was the daughter of the CEO, her arrest was a bit more connected to the fact that she was the CFO of the company at the time of the alleged offense and at the time of her arrest. Your implication that this was punishing the family member for the actions of the company is misleading, even if you think the charges were unjust.
The charges were unjust. The information the US says was hidden was actually contained on a slide within the now infamous PPT which basically formed the essence of the accusation. The thing is, that slide was deliberately excluded from the extradition request and the US was pushing hard to keep it out of the proceedings.
Not only that. The US admitted that HSBC employees were very well informed of the situation just that they weren't considered 'senior' enough.
Of course, HSBC had already signed off on a plea deal from its side even though the other time it got caught it only received a fine while for Meng they were pushing for a prison sentence.
And not only that. There was a shocking and sudden lack of memory on show from Canadian officials when valid doubts were raised on how things were done on the night of her detention.
The other fact I found rather interesting is that in the only US bank which was found guilty as a result of the 2008 financial crash was a bank called Abacus Federal Savings Bank - you can read more about them here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus_Federal_Savings_Bank
Yes - the financial collapse that nearly brough the Western financial system to its knees was due to a bank run by Chinese people in the US - this is what happens when you give foreigners a little bit of power in your country.
All those huge banks like JPMC etc that were bailed out did absolutely nothing wrong - you can read here for the list of UK banks bailed out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_Kingdom_bank_rescue_package - and the US banks bailed out here - https://money.cnn.com/news/specials/storysupplement/bankbailout/ but all this was due the Chinese ...
Remember to beware of Johnny Foreigner and lock up your wives and children and small pets lest they come to eat them all!
You never know what Johnny Foreigner will come and do!
There has to be some link - otherwise it would be the equivalent of dragging someone unrelated to the situation off the street.
Whether she is guilty or not - I would not rely on the words of the US Government given the other factors in play here
I would like to see Genode promoted by the EU. Especially since the similarly designed Fuchsia from Google seems to have failed at this stage. This would offer both an opportunity for technical progress beyond Linux/Android and also much needed EU sovereignty over personal computing systems.
That Huawei is pushing its Chinese vision of state surveillance to compliment the US vision of business surveillance makes then eed for an EU vision of personal sovereignty over data even more pressing.
On that subject, perhaps the Reg might review the just-dropped edition of Genode Sculpt (their in-house desktop distro)?
Harmony OS is an All OS structure, which means it works with all other OSes and on all devices. When a developer creates his application, he creates it once, and it immediately works on all devices, TV, watch, mobile, etc. One time Developing model.
One of the last novelty of the OS v4.0 is e.g. Cross-Screen, option of sharing the screen on up to 6 devices at the same time, without delay.
Moreover, Harmony OS has now more than 100 million lines of code.. for comparison, Win 11 has between 60 and 80 and Android about 13 million. It's obviously ready for the PC version too!
History of development - 5 mil lines of code - v3.0 26 mil - v4.0 100 mil.
Android itself has about 20% of Huawei contributed code, developed while they cooperated together. Since they parted away, Android has visibly stagnated in its development, which we can attribute to Huawei's non-participation in it.
Harmony OS Next is a non Android OS, all lines of code are removed and result is 20% more overall speed & performance. .. far ahead indeed.
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