14 DAY TRIAL // Huawei has recently trademarked a mobile operating system called Harmony, and there’s a good chance this is the company’s very own alternative to Android.
The trademark, which was filed at the European Union Intellectual Property Office, or EUIPO, on July 12, doesn’t include any information, other than this is a mobile operating system.
Since no specifics are available, we can only speculate that Huawei Harmony is the name of the OS the Chinese company has developed to replace Android on its own mobile devices.
Huawei was blacklisted by the United States government in mid-May, and according to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, the company was no longer allowed to do any business with American firms.
This prohibited the Chinese tech giant from using products like Android and Windows, which means that its new smartphones would have remained without an operating system to power them. Huawei started the work on an internal operating system to replace Android, and evidence discovered in the last couple of months indicated this could be called HongMeng.
OS ready for Chinese devices this year
However, HongMeng is likely to be just a codename or a moniker that Huawei would use for Chinese models, while Harmony could be the international name for the operating system.
People with knowledge of the matter said Huawei’s Android replacement was supposed to be finalized in the fall for Chinese models, whereas the international launch is scheduled for 2020. In the meantime, however, it appears that the United States government is ready to relax its restrictions against Huawei, so the company might eventually be able to use Android on new smartphones.
No matter what happens, however, Huawei wants to continue the development of its own OS, which means that regardless of the US approach, HongMeng, Harmony, or whatever it’ll end up being called, could replace Android on Huawei’s devices.
Via LetsGoDigital