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At the center stage of Huawei’s 2020 developer conference is Harmony OS 2.0, an update to the Shenzhen-based company’s self-made operating system (OS).
In Richard Yu’s vision, this operating system could be the core of a “connect everything” future. This is why he talked more about the distributive computing capabilities of the operating system.
The more Harmony devices you get together, the happier you will be.
But Huawei faces a very difficult world. America is doing everything but starting a war to assassinate the company. And many other governments are looking into the distance to see if this “cheap but great 5G company” can survive.
Let’s check if Harmony OS can replace the operating systems Huawei is currently using.
Android
Almost all Huawei smartphones currently on the market are based on Android.
Android is open source and is not under the control of its creator Google. But the problem is, Google’s impact on the Android ecosystem isn’t about owning it, it’s about supporting it.
Google created many services for Android, such as Maps, YouTube, Play Store, and many others.
It is already clear that an Android phone without Google services is only welcome in mainland China, where there is no Google service anyway.
So even if Harmony OS becomes a hit, European buyers will still ignore Huawei’s smartphones, unless they really want something without Google.
Huawei’s solution to this problem is Huawei’s mobile service and application gallery. They are still too young for us to call it success or failure.
But past experiences have told us that Samsung’s Tizen now rests on televisions and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile now rests nowhere.
Building an ecosystem from scratch could have become too difficult a job to do.
Windows
Huawei’s laptop business was doing very well before Windows was phased out.
But that may not be a serious problem for average users.
For one thing, Linux is there. Linux distributions may not be the best for personal use, but they are largely tolerable when properly tuned.
On the other hand, many people in developing countries are still hacking Windows heavily. Some of the users just don’t care if a laptop comes with Windows pre-installed or not.
With that said, using Harmony OS 2.0 to replace Windows on Huawei laptops is still not a good idea for now.
The problem lies in the applications. Windows applications are so versatile that not even Microsoft can beat them.
Microsoft has struggled in recent years to promote a new kind of native application. But the ecosystem only survives, it does not prosper. Users still prefer the old “dot-exe” method.
Obviously, there is no way for the Harmony OS to support Windows executables.
Linux
This is where things start to get interesting.
Linux is not only the foundation for Internet and Android servers, but also a widely used operating system for IIoT devices such as wearable devices, smart home products, and industry Internet systems.
Huawei already has LiteOS, a small operating system for IoT things that has proven to work very well.
Actually, part of the Harmony operating system was built on LiteOS.
After Huawei released the first part of the Harmony OS source code, programmers around the world showed interest and read it.
It turned out that the IoT part of Harmony OS was a modified version of LiteOS, with an addition of distributive computing capabilities.
Therefore, it is quite possible that Huawei will win a share of the IoT market.
But challenges remain. There are already many established IoT brands even in China.
Xiaomi has brought together many smaller electronics companies to form an alliance and try to own the smart home market. And Haier chose to produce everything with its own technologies.
Both companies have already built mature solutions that have been installed in millions of homes in China.
What kind of difference can Huawei make here? That’s one of the biggest questions surrounding Harmony OS 2.0 right now.
We will cover more about Huawei’s new operating system after the experts finish analyzing the code.
You can also read the Huawei code right now as the IoT part of the operating system is freely available.
