Huawei’s HarmonyOS 2.0 — is this the new ecosystem?
Today, Huawei’s CEO Richard Yu announced that the first smartphones running HarmonyOS could arrive sometime in the year 2021.
So, is HarmonyOS the new ecosystem competing against the monopoly of Google’s AndroidOS?
Why did the need for a new OS arise anyways?
1. Entity List
Back in 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce had added Huawei to the Entity List. In layman terms it means Huawei was no more allowed to do business with U.S. companies, the likes of which included Google or in general — Android.
2. Google Mobile Services(GMS)
Any mobile manufacturing company using Android OS buys GMS(Google Mobile Services) license from Google. Buying of GMS license implies getting access to google’s own apps and services like Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Chrome, Youtube, etc., but most importantly Google Play Store.
On top of that, developers can provide new services and apps using GMS. For example, location tracking within WhatsApp uses Google Maps data in the background.
3. Huawei Mobile Servies (HMS)
HMS is an alternative to Google’s GMS and consists of services like Huawei ID, Cloud, App Gallery, Themes, Huawei Video, Browser, Assistant. HMS is available on some Huawei devices like Honor 9X Pro, View 30 Pro, Huawei Mate XS.
The Harmonic Ecosystem
You can run your applications from one device to another having Harmony OS installed and you can share almost everything between devices like video games, movies, etc.
With Harmony OS, if you are video calling to your best friend on your smartphone and you want it to have it on your smart TV which has a camera, a screen, and Harmony OS installed, you can transfer it to your smart TV through NFC or Wi-Fi.
Huawei is able to achieve this control with the help of micro-kernels they have developed which lets the OS handle all the tedious work by itself.
This also explains the reason behind the naming convention followed by Huawei. The experience becomes surreal when all the devices work in harmony. Quite Neat!
Project — OpenHarmony
Huawei is also kicking off its OpenHarmony project, which allows developers to build upon an open-source version of the OS — similar to what AOSP is to Android. As of today the project only supports devices with 128MB of RAM or below, but that’ll expand to 4GB in April of next year, and the memory limit will be removed completely by October 2021.
Prospects within and outside China
Since GMS is already not supported in the Chinese market, Huawei is well on its way to provide another alternative to the home country. However, if we have learned something from the past is that a new OS needs the support of both — a good spec’ed-out device and an app-heavy app store.
Microsoft had denied the presence of Android for a very long time until they finally adopted Android in their newest Surface Duo 2020. While Microsoft made good phones in the past, they couldn’t encourage developers to make apps for Windows OS for their mobiles.
Samsung too tried TizenOS but couldn’t capitalize on the market because of its sub-standard mobile phones. They ultimately had to use TizenOS for the smartwatches and wearables.
So, in conclusion, although Huawei may make China their fortress for capturing the market for HarmonyOS, it will not be so easy outside China where Android and iOS are dominating the market. However, it is surely going to dent Android’s market share outside China too.
