Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch
- Reference: 1729661472
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/10/23/huaweis_harmonyos_next_launch/
- Source link:
Huawei [1]declared it released and "officially started public beta testing" of the OS for some of its smartphones and tablets that run its own Kirin and Kunpeng chips.
Unlike previous iterations of HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS NEXT no longer supports Android apps.
[2]
Huawei maintains top Chinese outfits aren't deterred by that. It cited Meituan, Douyin, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, Alipay, and JD.com as among those who have developed native apps for the OS. In case you're not familiar, they're China's top shopping, payment, and social media apps.
[3]Huawei dangles developer incentives to sell Harmony OS around the world
[4]Huawei names first tablets, phones to run its Android-in-disguise HarmonyOS 2
[5]TSMC blows whistle on potential sanctions-busting shenanigans from Huawei
[6]China ramps up semiconductor patents amid US export restrictions
Huawei also claimed that at the time of its announcement, over 15,000 HarmonyOS native applications and meta-services were also launched. That's a nice number, but well short of the millions of apps found on the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store.
The Chinese tech player also revealed that the operating system has 110 million lines of code and claimed it improves the overall performance of mobile devices running it by 30 percent. It also purportedly increases battery life by 56 minutes and leaves an average of 1.5GB of memory for purposes other than running the OS.
[7]
[8]
If you like the sound of that performance boost on your smartphone or tablet – the OS runs on both, with a consistent interface – we're sorry to report that Huawei told us it currently has no plans to offer Harmony OS NEXT outside of China. That's despite [9]previously saying it planned to take an older version of HarmonyOS offshore.
iLove China, says Apple
Huawei's launch was on the same day that Apple CEO Tim Cook met China's minister of Industry and Information Technology, Jin Zhuanglong. A ministerial [10]announcement claims that Cook told the minister "Apple is willing to actively seize the opportunities of China's opening up to the outside world, continue to increase investment in China, and help the high-quality development of the industrial chain and supply chain."
Huawei did try to export the last version of the OS – and even [11]offered assistance to developers who coded for the platform and targeted offshore markets – without success.
But it has succeeded in having offshore entities develop for the platform: Singapore-based rideshare-and-more app Grab, and the airline Emirates, have created apps for the OS.
The release marks a moment in China's push for tech independence. Before the upgrade, Huawei's HarmonyOS still relied on the Android Open Source Project for core functionality – a move driven by 2019 US sanctions that blocked Huawei's access to Google Mobile Services. That dependency has now been ditched.
[12]
Huawei hopes to bring its OS to PCs, too. Last month the chair of the Chinese giant's consumer business group, Yu Chengdong, [13]revealed it would no longer run Windows on its future machines, but Harmony OS instead. When such machines will emerge, and whether other PC-makers will use the OS, are unanswered questions. ®
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[1] https://www.huawei.com/cn/news/2024/10/harmonyos5
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZxjJR9FJjItPH3TcefDEiwAAAMo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/22/huawei_aims_harmony_os_at/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/03/huawei_harmonyos_2/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/22/tsmc_huawei_sanctions_report/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/21/global_semiconductor_patents_surge/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZxjJR9FJjItPH3TcefDEiwAAAMo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZxjJR9FJjItPH3TcefDEiwAAAMo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/22/huawei_harmonyos_expansion/
[10] https://www.miit.gov.cn/xwfb/bldhd/art/2024/art_16889e8f537a4c38acad6d34db00ff49.html
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/22/huawei_aims_harmony_os_at/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZxjJR9FJjItPH3TcefDEiwAAAMo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/23/asia_tech_news_in_brief/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
...it would be interesting to see how many are actually used...
Indeed, having millions of low-grade crap apps that serve little purpose beyond advert-slinging seems to be the thing these days!
This is not to defend all the crappy apps on Google Play, especially the ones that are basically just a browser wrapper around the website, but the (Mainland) Chinese app market is just as scammy, if not scammier. Just consider how many of the worst apps on GPlay/iOS Store are (Mainland) Chinese.
This will not help with that. It has nothing to do with improving the quality of apps, just removing the (Mainland) Chinese government (which Huawei is a bulwark of, by Mainland Chinese law) from any dependence on anything gwailo.
(And I keep explicitly using 'Mainland' because I have nothing against Chinese people, just Xi's fascists)
I would be happy that Google/Apple/FB/MS lose some of their monopoly status
They got that status by having proprietary technology - or encumbering open technology (like Android) with proprietary components without which it's seriously diminished in utility.
This situation isn't improved by adding further, incompatible, proprietary options. My bank is increasingly deprecating its online banking in favour of its mobile apps because it doesn't want to have to maintain a website as well as apps for two incompatible mobile platforms. It's not willingly going to increase its development and maintenance costs for yet another platform. A duopoly is where the intersection between proprietary technologies and the reasonable expenditure of developer resources leads,
Unless and until you can run the same app (or at least one that has substantially the same source code) on every phone (and even, perhaps, on the web) that's going to persist - and it's in the interests of the incumbents that day is as far away as possible. China has rather different reasons for treading a different path and can line up the various parts of the ecosystem along it as and when it chooses. Regulators elsewhere are belatedly waking up to the problem of platform gatekeepers, but they're (rightfully) not able to develop or impose technical solutions and it's hard to see at present from where those might emerge.
"My bank is increasingly deprecating its online banking in favour of its mobile apps because it doesn't want to have to maintain a website as well as apps for two incompatible mobile platforms."
The simple answer is to scrap the apps and only maintain the web site. Banking apps will never be installed on my phone - they're a scammers paradise and so easily stolen.
Any bank that requires an app will never get my custom.
"Huawei also claimed that at the time of its announcement, over 15,000 HarmonyOS native applications and meta-services were also launched. That’s a nice number, but well short of the millions of apps found on the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store."
15000 apps is not so bad for the beginning Of the Millions of apps on google/Apple it would be interesting to see how many are actually used and what kind of user base most of them have.
I am confident that China will indeed gain it's independence and them we will lose ours because we were all smug. Google and Apple are mastodons today but tomorrow has a bad habit of arriving quicker than we expected. I would be happy that Google/Apple/FB/MS lose some of their monopoly status but I am also a little wary of how that could be done and most notably by who...