In recent years, Huawei has undergone a radical transformation due to the strict sanctions imposed by the United States and Western countries. These restrictions significantly limited the company’s access to software products and electronic components developed with American technologies. One of the major challenges faced by the company was the ban on using Google services on its phones, leading to a sharp decline in its global sales. Huawei lost its leading position as one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world and fell behind in the global market. In response to these challenges, Huawei developed a system called HarmonyOS and launched it in 2020 for some of its devices, claiming its ability to achieve software self-sufficiency, but in reality, it was just a “modified version of Android”. Now, Huawei has ushered in a new chapter in its history by completely migrating from Android to a self-developed operating system, launched officially under the name HarmonyOS Next. Let’s take a closer look at how this system works, its advantages, and compatible devices.
HarmonyOS NEXT System
What is HarmonyOS originally?
HarmonyOS was first introduced in 2019 when it was surprised by the former U.S. President’s administration with a commercial ban in the same year, which prevented Huawei from using Android and Google services. As a result, the company introduced HarmonyOS in 2020 as an alternative to the “U.S.-supported Google Android version” so that it can run on its new smartphones. Huawei developed this operating system with three basic strategic pillars.
The first pillar is smart integration, where the system excels in achieving seamless integration between different Huawei devices, similar to Apple’s systems and the Ecosystem environment, allowing connected devices to function as an integrated unit, enabling the integration of their capabilities and capacities to meet user needs instantly and efficiently, so that the user can do more across their devices regardless of the device they use. The second pillar is unified development environment, which makes it easier for developers to write their applications code once and then run it on all Huawei devices, ensuring a consistent and smooth user experience across different devices, whether smartphones, tablets, or others. The third pillar is flexibility and adaptation, as HarmonyOS was designed from scratch with a flexible standard design that allows it to adapt to different devices according to their capabilities and resources, enabling the system to work efficiently on a wide range of devices, optimizing its performance according to each device’s characteristics and requirements.
Huawei managed to achieve these pillars in HarmonyOS to accelerate its market penetration. To make the rollout faster, Huawei decided to develop the system based on the open-source Android AOSP code, which allowed the company to benefit from the vast library of applications available for the Android system, maintaining its technological independence. As a result, it can easily attract Android users to its new smartphones with its own operating system. A Huawei phone user running HarmonyOS can easily install their favorite Android apps on their phone either by downloading the APK file or from the Huawei AppGallery store, which hosts a vast collection of Android apps modified to be compatible with HarmonyOS.
However, using HarmonyOS with the open-source source code of the Android system led to the new system being similar to Huawei’s popular “EMUI” interface, which raised criticisms. Some considered this system to be nothing more than a modified version of Android, often the reason why the launch of HarmonyOS did not generate widespread interest in the tech circles at that time. Later on, after launching 4 versions of HarmonyOS, Huawei announced that the system is now available on more than 100 million of its devices. The company also promised to develop an original version (independent from Android) of its new system and will exclusively support running applications designed for it, creating a competition with both iOS and Android, which dominate the smartphone operating system market.
Launching HarmonyOS NEXT and the radical shift
It does not seem like we will see a fifth version of the HarmonyOS system, and if there is one, it will not be like its predecessors! Huawei has officially launched the trial version of its new system called HarmonyOS Next, which is a completely isolated system from the Android environment and the associated services. This transformation represents a qualitative leap and a historic event for the Chinese technology giant. This transition means that HarmonyOS Next needs to develop its applications completely separately, as it lacks support for Android applications. Thus, its users will not be able to install APK files outside the official Huawei store, making the Huawei official store the only gateway for downloading applications. In turn, this store will completely ban the installation of Android apps to ensure a safe and stable experience.
The launch of HarmonyOS Next reflects the company’s focus on the Chinese market, which has recently seen a strong comeback. Huawei has climbed up the list of the largest phone sellers in China, and it is likely that Huawei is aiming to enter the global competition arena with its new operating system. The company later confirmed its intention to launch HarmonyOS Next globally. This also reflects Huawei’s future vision of building a completely independent system that combines superior performance and advanced security, focusing on developing its own integrated ecosystem, which is practically the same model as Apple, which designs its own software and components.
Successfully, the Chinese giant has achieved a technological development over the past 10 years, while European and American companies took about 30 years to achieve it —
Richard Yu, President of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, during the opening of
HDC 2024 conference
Richard Yu, President of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, during the opening of
HDC 2024 conference
