Electronics

On the evening of June 2, Huawei released its self-developed operating system for mobile phones-Harmony (Hongmeng) OS2.0, and brought a series of hardware products equipped with HarmonyOS2.0. According to Yu Chengdong, Huawei's executive director and CEO of consumer business, starting from June 2nd, Huawei Mate 40, Mate X2 and P40 phones will be upgraded to HarmonyOS 2.0, even the Mate 9 that was 4 years ago has the opportunity to upgrade.

At the press conference, Huawei spent a lot of space to show consumers how HarmonyOS2.0 integrates N devices into a "super terminal." This is announcing to the world that in the era of the Internet of Everything, Huawei will do what the Android system cannot do, and make the operating system a "unified language", so that each smart terminal is no longer an "island". Behind the gorgeous product "manifesto", it is not easy to aggregate hardware manufacturers and application suppliers. Can Hongmeng Ecosystem seize the opportunity to occupy the "Internet of Everything" star sea?

Create an operating system that "all things in one"

In the era of mobile Internet, there are many smart devices around us, such as mobile phones, computers, tablets, smart wearable devices, etc. Each device has its own operating system and operation mode. Generally speaking, which device is used depends on which device’s operating system is opened. The process of interconnecting devices between different brands is also very complicated.

At the press conference, Wang Chenglu, President of Huawei’s Consumer Business Software Department, shared a piece of data: less than 10% of consumers who bought smart products actually installed their apps, and those consumers who installed apps actually used apps Less than 5% of operating equipment.

With HarmonyOS, things will be different.

"From the day when Huawei started designing Harmony 5 years ago, it has adopted a full-stack decoupling architecture, hoping to use a set of code to meet the requirements of various hardware." Wang Chenglu said at the opening, "Today, HarmonyOS has achieved this. One point, this operating system can be used not only on mobile phones, on watches, and even on devices as small as 128kRAM. This is currently the only operating system that can cover all devices."

At the press conference, Wang Chenglu demonstrated the connection method created by the HarmonyOS 2.0 control center-allowing a series of devices to be "pull and fit" and "use me" according to usage needs. In the office scene, HarmonyOS connects the tablet, PC, large screen, and mobile phone together. Users can easily use the tablet stylus to generate sketches for all documents processed on the computer; when the user wants to use the mobile phone to do multi-camera shooting, you can Connect and pair other devices such as drones, sports cameras, etc. with the mobile phone through HarmonyOS. The mobile phone can form a multi-camera shooting "super terminal" just like dispatching the local camera.

Behind such simplicity, the technology is actually not simple.

Wang Chenglu pointed out that the connection and combination of two devices must undergo discovery, pairing, connection, combination, and verification. Only when all these operations are completed can the two devices be connected. Huawei creatively proposed a distributed technology-the use of a soft bus to connect a variety of independent devices. The soft bus is like a highway connecting each device.

What determines the future is the application ecology

The conference is over, but everything has just begun. Huawei HarmonyOS is not a smooth road.

Two years ago, Google began to restrict Huawei's access to the Android ecosystem. Since Android is an open source operating system, so far, Huawei phones can still continue to use the open source version of Android AOSP. It is worth mentioning that although Google cannot stop supplying Android, it can use its ecological GMS (Google Mobile System) to contain Huawei.

GMS is a set of applications and cloud services, including Play Store, Search, Gmail, Maps and other applications, as well as many system-level API interfaces and various service frameworks. It is the core of Android. This is dispensable for Chinese users, but for overseas users, once they lose GMS service support, the mobile phone can hardly do anything. It can be said that Google is not trying to jam Huawei through its operating system itself, but through the ecology behind the operating system.

It is understood that currently no other mobile phone manufacturers have explicitly stated that they will connect their mobile phone products to HarmonyOS. An independent IT telecom analyst told reporters that in order to persuade manufacturers to join Hongmeng, two points must be overcome. One is to prove the maturity level of HarmonyOS. If it is not tested by large-scale use, it is difficult for manufacturers to use it for sales goals. Higher mainstream mobile phones; second, for mobile phone manufacturers facing both the domestic market and the global market, they must consider the reactions of both domestic and international markets at the same time. Before HarmonyOS is recognized by overseas markets (mainly Southeast Asia and Europe) , It is difficult for them to adopt HarmonyOS.

"The most typical of the operating system is the above ecology, that is, whether the applications on it are rich enough. Compared with iOS and Android, the Hongmeng ecology is still in the early stage of development and needs sufficient time to migrate, just like a tropical rain forest. It definitely takes time to grow up." said Xie Heng, chief analyst of the electronics industry at Industrial Securities.

The era of the Internet of Everything has come, and the track of the operating system has also switched from mobile phones to the smart home "area". It just so happens that Huawei HarmonyOS is not entangled in the current "third largest operating system", and takes a broader and longer-term view, focusing on the entire star sea of "Internet of Everything". According to data officially disclosed by Huawei, Hongmeng Eco currently has more than 1,000 hardware ecosystem partners, covering almost all home appliance brands, including Midea, XGIMI, Skyworth, Joyoung, 360 and other superior companies in all categories and vertical fields.

Runmi Consulting founder Liu Run pointed out that as an Internet of Everything operating system, this is a good start, but it is not enough. Huawei needs more partners until it breaks through the "critical scale"-users because of the richness of developers Can't help but join, developers can't help but develop because of the magnitude of users, attracting each other, rolling bigger and bigger, forming an enhanced loop. For Hongmeng, it is very important to quickly attract ecological chain partners to join.