Huawei officials had made it clear that
Huawei would be launching 5G & its own OS named as
HongMeng in June 2019. This launch would be in China, the rest of the world would experience HongMeng somewhere in 2020.
Huawei is ambitious to launch its own
Operating System to replace Android as soon as possible. The HongMeng is compatible with phones, tablets, smartwatches, computers, TVs, and more.
According to Alaa Elshimy, who is the Managing Director and Vice President of Huawei Enterprise Business Group Middle East, Huawei was working on its own OS since long. The OS had been ready since
January 2018. The only reason they had halted the rollout of the OS was that they had strong relationships with
Googleand others, which they did not want to damage. However, with all the fuss, they are now ready to launch their own OS next month.
HongMeng
would enable users to use all the android applications. The users would have to
access the Huawei application gallery to download applications.
However, this looks
similar to the third-party application store that has been
tested by Amazon. Yes, Amazon also has its own Appstore for Android. Yet it is not widely used and acknowledged as such as app-store does not compete with the storefronts.
How is Huawei Dealing with the Current
Bans?
For those who do not know, the U.S has posted a
ban on Huawei access to Android since 20
th May 2019. The U.S, however, granted an extension until August 19. This extension was provided by the U.S. Commerce Department to entertain existing Huawei users.
How ARM affects Huawei
Now, with the cut off of Huawei from U.S.-made technology, not only Huawei’s software is affected, but also the Hardware. The aftermaths of the ban are already being experienced by Huawei: it has been
banned by the SD Association and is now only restricted to
Wi-Fi Alliance. ARM has been forced to cut off the ties with Huawei, Huawei’s Kirin processor is now at a risk. Without a license from
ARM, which is for the processor design, Huawei won’t be able to design a single smartphone!
Huawei is still Optimistic
Elshimy,
however, says that Huawei isn’t worried about it as well. Huawei is a self-reliant
organization. She briefed that Huawei has its own chipsets except for the Intel
chips for PCs and servers. The storage players in the market are using Qualcomm
chipset, while Huawei is using its own chipset. That is why we can go at the
speed we want.
Future Expectations
It means that the company isn’t dead and it can survive without US technologies. Trump has even posted an idea that Huawei might be part of future trade deals. This looks similar to the Chinese phone maker
ZTE. It was saved under a future deal by the US at last moment. Yet experts are of the view that the delay in the deal would make things uglier for Huawei and the countries involved.
