GUANGZHOU, China – In mid-2019, Huawei launched its own operating system, HarmonyOS, in response to U.S. actions that separated it from Google’s software.
It was the Chinese technology giant’s most ambitious mobile software push, which it hoped would help it survive its phone business.
On Monday, Huawei announced that HarmonyOS would begin launching on its smartphones starting in April. Huawei phone users could 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, launched on Monday, would be one of the first to get HarmonyOS with other phones.
In 2019, Huawei was blacklisted in the United States known as the list of entities that 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 Google Android licensed on its smartphones. This is no big deal in China, where Google apps like Gmail are blocked. But in overseas markets, where Android is the most popular operating system, it took a big hit.
This move by the Trump administration combined with sanctions designed to cut Huawei off critical chip supplies, has hurt smartphone sales of the Chinese telecommunications firm.
Huawei will need to find a source of chip supply for its smartphones. But HarmonyOS is the other “critically important” part in ensuring the survival of Huawei’s smartphone business, according to Nicole Peng, an analyst at Canalys.
HarmonyOS development
Huawei promotes HarmonyOS as an operating system that can run between devices, from smartphones to TVs. In September, it released the second version of HarmonyOS and has been courting developers to create apps for the platform.
And with a view to international users, Huawei redesigned the interface of its app store known as AppGallery and improved navigation features.
A guest holds his phone showing a photograph taken during Huawei’s press conference that unveiled its new HarmonyOS operating system in Dongguan, Guangdong Province on August 9, 2019.
Fred Dufour | AFP | Getty Images
“Integrated search in the AppGallery will go a long way in helping people discover apps,” Peng said.
In addition, Huawei will push the upgrade to existing users of its devices, which should help boost the use of the overseas operating system.
Huawei’s AppGallery currently has more than 530 million monthly active users.
The challenges of smartphones
Applications are critical for mobile operating systems. Apple’s iOS and Apple Android are the two most dominant operating systems, as they have millions of developers making apps for their respective platforms.
Huawei has a set of applications such as maps and a browser under a banner called Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). HMS is similar to Google’s mobile services and offers developer kits that can be used to integrate things like location services into applications. HMS has 2.3 million registered developers worldwide.
And in China, it is able to incorporate popular applications.
However, in international markets, Huawei could face some challenges. For example, your app store is missing important names, such as Facebook or Google, that are important to overseas users.
“If Huawei wants to be successful in selling phones overseas, it needs the right apps, which are unlikely to reach HarmonyOS. So it’s crucial to get back into Google’s mobile services if you want to build your international phone business.” , said Bryan Ma, emailed vice president of device research at IDC.
With Google Android and iOS dominating outside of China, Huawei will also have the tough task of convincing users to change.
“As for the challenges, it’s still in areas … (if) the product can be accepted by heavy users using, for example, Google apps and Google services,” Peng of Canalys said.
Meanwhile, Huawei is also potentially missing the key supply to make phones in the future as the United States goes on to cut it from chips. Huawei’s Mate X2 uses Huawei’s Kirin 9000 processor. Richard Yu, the CEO of the consumer business, said the company has enough production capacity for the folding phone even after warning last year that supplies could run out.
This, along with the uncertainty of success with the operating system, is a major challenge facing Huawei.
“Huawei could continue to drive the local Chinese market without these concerns (about HarmonyOS apps), but there is a much bigger problem in the fact that it is struggling to get components in the first place,” Ma said.