David Kirton
SHENZHEN, China (Reuters) – Packed into a small room, a drone, a bipedal robot, a supermarket checkout and other devices show a vision of China’s software future, in which an operating system developed by national champion Huawei has replaced Windows and Android.
The collection is housed at the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center in the southern city of Shenzhen, a local government facility that encourages authorities, companies and hardware makers to develop software using OpenHarmony, an open-source version of the operating system that Huawei released five years ago. after US sanctions ended support for Android from Google (NASDAQ:).
While Huawei’s recent successful smartphone launches have been closely watched for signs of progress in China’s chip supply chain, the company has also quietly amassed expertise in sectors critical to Beijing’s vision of technological self-sufficiency, from operating systems to automotive software.
President Xi Jinping last year told the Communist Party’s elite Politburo that China must fight an uphill battle to localize operating systems and other technologies “as soon as possible” as the United States tightens exports of advanced chips and other components.
OpenHarmony is now being widely touted in China as a “national operating system” amid concerns that other major companies could be cut off from Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:) Windows and Android products on which many of the systems are based.
“This strategic move will likely reduce the market share of Western operating systems such as Android and Windows in China as local products gain traction,” said Sunny Chung, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a U.S. defense policy group.
In the first quarter of 2024, Huawei’s HarmonyOS, the company’s own version of its operating system, surpassed Apple’s (NASDAQ:) iOS to become the second best-selling mobile operating system in China after Android, according to research firm Counterpoint. It has not launched on smartphones outside of China.
Huawei no longer controls OpenHarmony, having donated its source code to the nonprofit OpenAtom Foundation in 2020 and 2021, according to an internal memo and other publications.
But both the innovation center and government documents often refer to OpenHarmony and HarmonyOS interchangeably as part of the broader Harmony ecosystem. The growth of HarmonyOS, a PC version expected to be released this year or next, will drive adoption of OpenHarmony, analysts say.
“Harmony has created a powerful foundational operating system for the future of Chinese devices,” said Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, at the opening of a developer conference last week.
Huawei did not respond to a request for further comment.
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
Huawei first unveiled Harmony in August 2019, three months after Washington imposed trade restrictions on it over alleged security concerns. Huawei denies that its equipment poses a risk.
Since then, China has stepped up its efforts to become self-sufficient, cutting itself off from the main code sharing hub Github and maintaining a local version of Gitee.
China banned the use of Windows on government computers in 2014, and they now use mostly Linux-based operating systems.
Microsoft gets only about 1.5% of its revenue from China, its president said this month.
Originally built on the open-source Android system, this year Huawei released its first “clean” version of HarmonyOS, which no longer supports Android-based apps, further separating China’s app ecosystem from the rest of the world.
A Jamestown Foundation report published last month said OpenHarmony’s owner, OpenAtom, appears to be coordinating efforts by Chinese firms to develop a viable alternative to U.S. technology, including for defense applications such as satellites.
Beijing-based OpenAtom did not respond to a request for comment.
OPEN SOURCE
OpenHarmony became the fastest-growing open-source operating system for smart devices last year, with contributions from more than 70 organizations and the creation of more than 460 hardware and software products in the financial, education, aerospace and industrial sectors, Huawei said in its annual report for 2023. .
The goal of open source code is to replicate Android’s success in lowering licensing costs for users and giving companies a customizable springboard for their own products, Charlie Cheng, deputy manager of the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center, said during a Reuters visit.
“Harmony will definitely become a mainstream operating system and give the world a new choice of operating systems beyond iOS and Android,” he said. “China is learning from the West.”
Google, Apple and Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.
The Harmony ecosystem has received strong support from Huawei’s hometown of Shenzhen, a city that has historically been used as a testing ground for policies later adopted across China.
In addition to the Harmony center that opened in the southwestern city of Chengdu, 10 more are expected to open in 10 other cities, according to a presentation of the center in Shenzhen.
Key developers of OpenHarmony include Shenzhen Kaihong Digital, led by Wang Chenglu, a former Huawei employee known as the “godfather of Harmony,” and Chinasoft. Both worked on infrastructure software at the port of Tianjin and in mines in China’s largest coal-producing province of Shaanxi.
While OpenHarmony is largely limited to China, the Brussels-based open source group Eclipse Foundation said it is using it to develop a system called Oniro for use in mobile phones and Internet of Things devices.
China’s previous efforts to build large open-source projects have struggled to gain traction among developers, but Huawei’s growing smartphone market share and additional work to develop a broader ecosystem give Harmony an edge, analysts say.
More than 900 million devices, including smartphones, watches and car systems, run on HarmonyOS, and 2.4 million developers write code in the ecosystem, Huawei’s Yu said this month.
“OpenHarmony will need more time and iterations to get these developers more confident working with OpenHarmony,” said Emma Xu, an analyst at research firm Canalys. “But the reputation, behavior and confidence that HarmonyOS has achieved will definitely have a positive effect.”