Sijia Jiang andBrenda Goh for Reuters:
Huawei Technologies unveiled on Friday its proprietary operating system for smartphones and other devices, as U.S. trade restrictions imposed in May threaten to cut the Chinese firm’s access to U.S. technologies such as Android. But Huawei said that for now it would stick to using Google’s Android for smartphones, and the new software will be gradually rolled out to support devices such as smartwatches, speakers and virtual reality gadgets.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has warned that Huawei could be a vehicle for Chinese espionage and put the company on a so-called “entity list”, meaning that U.S. corporations that conduct business with the telecoms giant now require special licenses to do so.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said last week Washington could respond this week to companies that have requested special licenses to sell to Huawei… [Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s consumer business group] said the company has no updated knowledge on whether it can continue to use Android.
People familiar with its development at Huawei said Harmony was not being developed to rival Android, but was more like Google’s Fuchsia – an open source OS being developed at the American firm for gadgets that could include everything from smartphones to Internet-of-Things devices.
MacDailyNews Take: Tizen II. Good luck with that.
Perfect vehicle to spy on everyone. The Chinese govt will bee happy.
Nothing the US hasn’t been doing for years. Chinese guilty of catch up.
This is going to be an unholy mess. Security updates will be zero.
Oh, there will be “security updates”. …….those approved by the Chinese government, and they will call them “enhancements” or “upgrades” and they will be mandatory.
A in house OS is the first step, in time they (Asia) will get it right and Apple should be planning on that long term…..
Ohh good….I can’t wait to download. I love living in a glass house.
Chances of them making a proper Android replacement (i.e a full powered modern smartphone OS) is zero.
The press today all over is just regurgitating Huawei’s disinformation.
Samsung couldn’t make an Android replacement.
Microsoft couldn’t make a modern phone OS, in spite of years of OS work including Windows Phone, Win Mobile, Zune OS, and buying Nokia.
Google itself has tried to replace Android with dismal results.
Blackberry couldn’t replace Blackberry OS with a proper modern OS in spite of buying ONX.
Huawei’s claims that Harmony would run both smartphones AND PCs is as far out there as Star Trek matter transportation. Google couldn’t do it. Neither could Microsoft.
Huawei being better at OS than Google and Microsoft is laughable.
The fine print discloses Huawei is not going to use Harmony in phones but ‘other’ stuff.
It’s Blackberry QNX deja vu. Once touted as a iPhone killer (I use to debate this with Blackberry fanatics on phone forums) QNX has quietly gone back to being an embedded OS for cars etc.
I don’t underestimate the sheer amt of stolen Apple IP used in Harmony.