In response to the U.S. government’s decision to effectively ban Huawei equipment from stateside cellular networks, the Beijing-based company asserted in May that it was readying an in-house operating system (OS) for launch on devices in China by year-end 2019.
Today at its developer conference in Dongguan, China, Huawei formally announced the OS — HongmengOS, or HarmonyOS in English — and revealed that it will ship not only on future mobile devices, but on in-vehicle systems, smart speakers, and wearables, too.
Huawei expects the first version of HarmonyOS — HarmonyOS 1.0 — to arrive with unnamed smart screen products due out in the coming months.
(Reuters reported this week that Huawei-owned Honor would bring HarmonyOS to a smart TV and potentially a smartphone.)
China will be the initial focus ahead of an expansion to other markets in mid-2020, and Huawei says it plans to “optimize” and “gradually adopt” HarmonyOS across a range of devices over the next three years.
“We’re entering a day and age where people expect a holistic intelligent experience across all devices and scenarios.