Huawei launches Harmony OS

Huawei has officially unveiled its in-house developed open-source operating system dropping the HongMeng OS moniker for something more global in calling it HarmonyOS. The operating system is based on what Huawei is calling “the first microkernel-based distributed OS for all scenarios’ meaning that it will scale from IoT devices like  smart speakers through to TVs, wearables and smartphones. According to CEO Richard Yu, the operating system will support RAM sizes from as low as kilobytes through to gigabytes.

As rumored, HarmonyOS makes its debut on the new Honor Vision TV set that goes on sale in China from tomorrow. Huawei is definitely hedging its bets with this operating system with the company revealing that the ARK compiler used in HarmonyOS app development will support Kotlin, Java, Javascript, C and C++ languages meaning that porting apps to the OS should be substantially simplified. Not only that, HarmonyOS will support HTML5, Linux and Android apps.“ If we cannot use Android in the future, then we can immediately switch to HarmonyOS,” Yu explained to attendees at the announcement, while also purporting that it “is not that difficult” for the company to migrate away from Android should it need to in the future.  

However, this is not something that the company admits it will be able to achieve overnight as it continues to develop the operating system. “HarmonyOS 1.0 will be first adopted in [Huawei’s] smart screen products, which are due to launch later this year. Over the next three years, HarmonyOS will be optimized and gradually adopted across a broader range of smart devices, including wearables, Huawei Vision, and head units for your car,” an emailed press release states. Although Huawei has been able to resume normal Android services after having them temporarily suspended following the Trump Administration ban on the company, it is good to know it has a viable 'plan B' in the pipeline.