HarmonyOS, Huawei's own operating system, has been in development for 3 years. Last year, the company officially announced its first version at HUAWEI DEVELOPER CONFERENCE (HDC) 2019. The company is expected to present its second version at the 2020 conference. The Chinese telecommunications giant is rumored to release a smartphone under its control by the end of this year. But now Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, officially confirms that the company will not have such a smartphone this year.
Yu Chendong, commonly known as Richard Yu, recently attended the Yabuli Forum Summit in Qingdao (via Sinu ). At that meeting, he was asked about the HarmonyOS-based Huawei smartphone.
To this he replied that this year the release of such a device is not planned. But that doesn't mean it won't come out next year. In other words, the CEO repeated his last year announcement speech on HarmonyOS .
That being said, he mentioned that Android is their choice of operating system for smartphones because of the ecosystem and partners. But they will continue to design and release HarmonyOS devices to remain self-sufficient in the long term.
Vincent Young, senior vice president of Huawei, made a similar announcement last year that they will support a unified ecosystem with Android. But HarmonyOS will continue to exist as a plan B in the event of a worst-case scenario.
In addition, since the CEO was interviewed in the hallway of the summit venue, he did not respond properly to the chip issue. But he said they are still looking for a solution.
Currently, Huawei's operating system can only be found on its smart TVs. But according to a roadmap released by the company last year, HarmonyOS 2.0 will support PCs, cars and smart wearables. This version is expected to become official at HDC 2020, which is scheduled for September 10-12.
While there won't be any smartphones running HarmonyOS this year, we can still look forward to the rumored Mate Watch with this feature.
