After US ban on the Chinese firm’s product, Huawei has finally revealed its Harmony OS, an alternative to Android Operating System. The announcement was made at this year’s Huawei Development Conference in Dongguan, China. According to the firm’s Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu, the OS can be deployed at any time when Huawei can no longer access the Android ecosystem.
The microkernel-based Harmony OS is touted to be faster and safer than Android and can be deployed to multiple types of devices at once the opposite of Android.
Huawei has been working on the operating system since 2017 and will on the onset target smart display products such as Huawei Vision which will be unveiled this year. The OS will also support high performance graphics. Developers will also have the option of porting Android Apps over to Harmony OS using Huawei’s ARK compiler. The company has yet to say how this will affect the smartphones and entirely avoided mentioning the products which heavily rely on Google’s Android.
Just a day ago, in a protracted onslaught on the Chinese company over national security features, the Trump administration banned US federal agencies from doing business with Huawei as part of the crackdown on Chinese technology. The Chinese company has on the other hand for the longest time said that they have not been and cannot spy for the Chinese government.
In May this year, amid escalating trade wars, the Trump administration blacklisted Huawei forcing US companies to cut ties with the Chinese firm and effectively blocking its ability to purchase American chips.
It remains to be seen if this new OS will edge out the dominant Android which has faced competition from the likes of Microsoft and Samsung’s Tizen which have been left to play second fiddle.
More to follow….
|Afroway
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