Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (/ˈhwɑːˌweɪ/; simplified Chinese: 华为; traditional Chinese: 華為; pinyin: About this soundHuáwéi) is a Chinese multinational technology company that provides telecommunications equipment and sells consumer electronics, including smartphones, headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong.
The company was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei. Initially focused on manufacturing phone switches, Huawei has expanded its business to include building telecommunications networks, providing operational and consulting services and equipment to enterprises inside and outside of China, and manufacturing communications devices for the consumer market. Huawei had over 188,000 employees as of September 2018, around 76,000 of them engaged in Research & Development (R&D). It has 21 R&D institutes around the world, and in the late 2010s, opened the dedicated Ox Horn Campus. As of 2017, the company invested US$13.8 billion in R&D.
U.S. measures intensified in May 2019; in the midst of an ongoing trade war between China and the United States, Huawei was restricted from doing commerce with U.S. companies due to alleged previous wilful violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran. On 29 June 2019, U.S. president Donald Trump reached an agreement to resume trade talks with China, and announced that he would ease the aforementioned sanctions on Huawei.
Hongmeng OS (simplified Chinese: 鸿蒙OS; traditional Chinese: 鴻蒙; pinyin: Hóngméng OS; also known as Harmony OS; code name: Ark), is an Android-app compatible operating system under development by Huawei since 2012 towards their future products. To date and despite speculation, the company has not yet publicly designated an official name on the release of the operating system.
In a published newspaper interview with Die Welt, Huawei executive Richard Yu stated that such an Operating System (OS) could be used as a Plan B if it were prevented from using Android or Windows as the result of U.S. restrictions, but that he would “prefer to work with the ecosystems of Google and Microsoft”. Huawei, since June 2019, has been treating EMUI as an operating system, sparking rumours about Hongmeng OS’ final naming. Some media outlets claim Hongmeng OS could be released in China in either August or September 2019 with a worldwide release in the second quarter of 2020.
It is not known whether or not Hongmeng OS will be based on AOSP. However, international trade lawyer Kevin Wolf explained that Huawei would not be allowed to use AOSP, since a considerable part of AOSP is made by Google, which is a US company, and thus, AOSP is subject to US trade regulations.
From August 9th to August 11th, Beijing time, Huawei’s 2019 Developer Conference for Global Developers will be held in Songshan Lake, Dongguan. It is reported that this year is also the first time Huawei has held a developer conference in the European town of Huawei Songshan Lake Base.
A few days ago, Huawei officially unveiled the guests of the developer conference, in addition to C-showing Huawei consumer business CEO Yu Chengdong, Huawei Huawei Business Software President Wang Chenglu, Huawei Consumer Business Cloud Service President Zhang Pingan, Huawei Fellow Ivey and Huawei’s chief strategy officer for consumer business.
The developer conference of the Huawei consumer business executives collectively unveiled, it is expected that there will be a lot of “dry goods” release. According to previous reports, in the keynote speech on the afternoon of August 9, Yu Chengdong will bring a major release.
Earlier, Yu Chengdong publicly stated that the fastest in the fall of this year, the next spring, Huawei’s self-developed operating system will soon be available. It is reported that Yu Chengdong’s speech at the conference is likely to be related to Hongmeng OS.
Following questions we should consider:
Hongmeng is an Internet of Things system, there is the possibility of adapting mobile phones, but it is not finalized;
Hongmeng’s biggest advantage is ultra-low latency, the biggest disadvantage is that there is no mature ecology;
Hongmeng is not a backup system for Huawei mobile phones. Even if there is no mobile phone, Huawei needs other devices.
There are “technical arguments” in “Hong Kong or some areas” that are “60% faster than Android”. The details are not known;
Hongmeng currently has no clear date of listing. At present, Huawei mobile phones are still dominated by Android ecosystem.
