According to the recent reports, Huawei is reportedly intensively testing its proprietary operating system (OS) HongMeng with internet giants and domestic smartphone vendors, and the new system will be launched in the next few months.
Technology companies such as Tencent, Xiaomi, Oppo, vivo have teamed up with employees of Huawei who are in charge of EMUI, a custom mobile OS based on Android that Huawei uses on most Huawei and Honor-branded smartphones to test the new HongMeng OS, according to media reports.
The theme behind the story is China’s threat to split the global smartphone ecosystem, providing an alternative to Google’s full-blown Android software and services.
The report also claimed that HongMeng OS will be 60% faster than Android. Some industry analysts believe that the upcoming Huawei P40 will be equipped with the HongMeng OS.
This clearly shows that Google stands to lose the most from a concerted Chinese effort around a non-Google OS. In China where Google services are blocked, Huawei already uses the open-source version of Android.
This is why Google is now lobbying for an Android exemption from the Huawei ban, arguing that the ban on Huawei will raise national security risks to the US.
It is important to note that 3 of the world’s top 6 smartphone manufacturers are Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo and together with vivo and OnePlus, the number of devices worldwide exceeds 500 million. Imagine what will happen to Android Operating system if the top smartphone manufacturers pulls out.
As it stand, the new OS ‘HongMeng’ will either make or break Huawei unless something changes in the U.S stance.