Wang Chenglu, President of the Software Engineering Department of Huawei Consumer Business Group (BG)
Doha: The spotlight was on HarmonyOS 2.0 at the 2020 Huawei Developer Conference (HDC), wherein Harmony 2.0 was officially made open source.
Nevertheless, there are still many misconceptions about HarmonyOS. Such as it is some hastily thrown together Android replacement that Huawei introduced in response to US sanctions.
However, at last year’s HDC, Huawei articulated a much more interesting vision of what HarmonyOS could be. They spoke of it not as a smartphone OS, but as a system that would run on various smart devices, providing them with a lingua franca they can use to communicate and share information with each other. More interesting still is that Huawei expects that many of these devices will not be Huawei devices. The company intends to partner with other manufacturers to jointly create an all-scenario ecosystem.
Wang Chenglu (pictured), President of the Software Engineering Department of Huawei Consumer Business Group (BG), explained in detail how Huawei would co-create an ecosystem based on Harmony 2.0 with partners.
“HarmonyOS is not an operating system for a single type of devices, rather it supports a diverse range of devices,” Chenglu explained. In his words, the HarmonyOS ecosystem provides developers with the possibility of going beyond the limitation of mobile phones, and this is achieved by upgrading three core technologies: the distributed virtual bus, distributed data management, and distributed security.
Content, apps, and use cases are the soul of the ecosystem. Huawei is attempting to enable the ecosystem development by helping hardware vendors and app developers to thrive in this ecosystem.
When HarmonyOS comes to mobile phones sometime this year, it will mean that phones are no longer isolated devices. Instead, they will be able to seamlessly connect to and share capabilities with various devices in the home.
For example, a mobile phone can be used as the remote control of an air conditioner, and having a mobile phone screen at their disposal will allow air conditioner manufacturers to create a user interface that is more intuitive and detailed than users have seen before. HarmonyOS can support smartphones and other smart devices including TVs, automotive head units, and wearables. In the past, users enjoyed personalised apps.
With HarmonyOS, users can have personalised devices, which better satisfy their needs. In the era of feature phones, the hardware and software of a phone were fixed. In the smartphone era, hardware was still fixed, but new ability to download apps offered users a more personalised experience.
Now, the revolutionary distributed technology of HarmonyOS means that capabilities can be decoupled from hardware, allowing multiple physically independent devices to converge into one “Super Device”. It can flexibly invoke and combine the software and hardware capabilities that are most suitable for the current use case, providing users with a smooth, seamless AI experience
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