Huawei is continuing to work towards moving away from Google’s Android operating system. Our regular readers probably remember the news of Huawei working on its own operating system that it has dubbed as HongMeng.
What led Huawei to this? We are sure most of you remember about the ban that the US Government placed on Huawei in May thus stopping it from making use of any American software or hardware without gaining approval from the US government first. The Chinese telecom company had already been working on HongMeng but sped up the pace of the work and started working towards its completion.
As per Global Times – Chinese state-owned media site – the efforts have paid off as HongMeng will be making it to the market by the end of 2019. According to a source, Huawei has plans of releasing a $290 smartphone that will be running its own OS, HongMeng during the fourth quarter along with the Huawei Mate30 series that is also slated for Fall 2019. This implies that the company will be testing its HongMeng OS on the low-tier phones while it continues to use Google’s Android for its higher flagship devices.
There is no confirmation if HongMeng will be used on all of the devices of the Huawei, but it most certainly should be part of the long-term strategy. Huawei has to be prepared for any kind of incident with the US government and must take all necessary precautions. HongMeng is undergoing development to be used across the Internet-of-Things devices. The new OS will have to come up with an app system in order to compete with Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store.
Ren Zhengfei, CEO and founder of Huawei, stated last month that HongMeng would be faster as opposed to Android. However, we will have to wait and see how HongMeng compares to Android.