Huawei launches Harmony operating system to rival Google's Android

Just the way many industry watchers expected the second-largest smartphone manufacturer, Huawei to respond to Donald Trump administration's blacklisting of the company, the Chinese company has launched its much-anticipated operating system ‘HarmonyOS’ to rival Google-owned Android OS.

Richard Yu, the head of Huawei’s consumer business, said that the new system, called HarmonyOS or Hong Meng in Chinese, would “bring more harmony and convenience to the world”.

The software is considered crucial for the tech group’s survival as it confronts a looming White House ban on US companies selling technology products to Huawei and this could remove its access to Google’s Android operating system.

Yu said the new system was a “future-oriented OS” to be “more smooth and secure”, which he said was “completely different from Android and iOS”.

Huawei said the first version of the operating system would launch later this year in its smart screen products while over the next three years, it will be developed across a range of smart devices including wearable technology.

Huawei was prompted to go through the route of developing its own Operating System after it was caught in a trade war between Beijing and Washington.

In fact, the Trump-led US administration blacklisted Huawei amid suspicions that it provides a backdoor for Chinese intelligence services something the firm denies.

With the company's new smartphones like the Huawei P30 Pro sporting a Harmony OS Kernel already, they will be able to create next-generation proprietary experiences as soon as the OS is rolled out. An example of this would be casting video calls from your smartphone to a TV, or calls to a smart speaker.