Huawei has formally launched its in-house mobile operating system HarmonyOS NEXT, officially separating itself from the Android ecosystem. The Chinese tech giant has officially started public beta testing of its new OS on some of its devices running its own Kirin and Kunpeng chips.
Since HarmonyOS NEXT doesn’t rely on Android, Android apps aren’t supported on the OS either. However, the company claims that several major Chinese shopping, payment, and social media apps, such as Meituan, Douyin, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, Alipay, and JD.com, have already launched native versions of the platform. At the time of the announcement, 15,000 native HarmonyOS apps and services had been launched.
As for the OS, Huawei says it has 110 million lines of code and will improve the performance of devices running the OS by 30 percent. Battery life also increases by 56 minutes, leaving 1.5 GB of memory on average for tasks other than running the OS. AI features are also baked into the OS, with the suite aptly named Huawei Intelligence.
There’s no word on whether the platform will be available outside China. Still, the company has gotten some offshore apps on its platform, including Singapore-based ridesharing app Grab and the airline Emirates. That said, while 15,000 is an impressive number of apps for a platform to launch, it still falls short of the millions of apps the Android ecosystem has.
The move marks a major achievement in China’s push to develop its technology and infrastructure, as Huawei has relied on the Android Open Source Project for HarmonyOS’ core functionality. With China also aiming to replace Windows on its computers, a version of the OS for computers is also on the horizon. However, whether these platforms will be used by manufacturers other than Huawei is yet to be seen.
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