Huawei OS Getting Close
While Huawei (pvt) has been the focus of much of the US trade tension over the last year or so, the company has not been sitting still. The company’s trade problems with the US have severely affected its smartphone business, which has been restricted from accessing the Google (GOOG) Play Store, Google Maps, or YouTube. While this is less of a problem in China, it limits Huawei’s ability to sell smartphones in almost all other locations.
To that end, Huawei has been developing its own operating system which it hopes to use to replace Android in its own phones and those from other brands. Huawei is expect to release the first non-Beta version of its Harmony OS before the end of 1H and possibly sooner, and has already enlisted over 300 3rd party partners but it will take years to develop the same following as Android or even Apple’s (AAPL) IoS. Hauwei has set a goal of having more than 100m smartphones operating under the OS this year, along with another 100m from other brands.
While we have heard good things about the Harmony OS, less has to do with the OS itself and more to do with how many developers write to the platform. Huawei is not charging a fee for access to the code so it will be essential ‘open source’ but without a vast group of developers, consumers will still be limited to local Chinese apps. Huawei will certainly gain some momentum in China itself, which might be enough to convince off Mainland developers to port to Harmony, but it’s not going to be as easy task, with others, including Microsoft (MSFT) willing to acknowledge, having failed to conquer the mobile OS space.
To that end, Huawei has been developing its own operating system which it hopes to use to replace Android in its own phones and those from other brands. Huawei is expect to release the first non-Beta version of its Harmony OS before the end of 1H and possibly sooner, and has already enlisted over 300 3rd party partners but it will take years to develop the same following as Android or even Apple’s (AAPL) IoS. Hauwei has set a goal of having more than 100m smartphones operating under the OS this year, along with another 100m from other brands.
While we have heard good things about the Harmony OS, less has to do with the OS itself and more to do with how many developers write to the platform. Huawei is not charging a fee for access to the code so it will be essential ‘open source’ but without a vast group of developers, consumers will still be limited to local Chinese apps. Huawei will certainly gain some momentum in China itself, which might be enough to convince off Mainland developers to port to Harmony, but it’s not going to be as easy task, with others, including Microsoft (MSFT) willing to acknowledge, having failed to conquer the mobile OS space.
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