Hongmeng OS 2 Launched This Year Aims To Cover 300 Million Terminals?

On the evening of June 2, Huawei Hongmeng operating system harmonyos ushered in an important moment. Huawei officially released a number of new products carrying harmonyos 2, including Huawei mate 40 series new version, mate x2 new version, Huawei watch 3 series, Huawei mate pad pro and other mobile phones, smart watches and flat panel products. At the same time, Huawei mobile phones, tablets and other "100" devices will start to upgrade harmonyos 2.

Huawei said that nowadays there are more and more intelligent terminals around consumers, but due to the fragmentation of the system, the connection is complex, the operation is cumbersome, and the experience is fragmented. Harmonyos is a new generation of intelligent terminal operating system, which provides a unified language for the intelligence, interconnection and collaboration of different devices. Through distributed technology, a set of system can meet the needs of various devices, large and small, and realize flexible deployment; N devices are combined into a "super terminal", hardware mutual assistance, resource sharing, free call according to personal needs. For developers, harmonyos can realize one-time development and multi terminal deployment, making multi device application development easier.

This means that the further popularization of harmonyos, from the start of R & D in 2016 and the official "debut" in 2019, to its formal application in mobile phones, tablets and other terminals, Hongmeng has made rapid progress. The growth of operating system needs huge investment and matching software and hardware ecology. It is not easy to create a mature ecology. The setting off of Hongmeng is also another charge in the field of operating system in China.

Huawei's goal is that the Hongmeng operating system will cover more than 300 million devices in 2021, of which 200 million come from Huawei's own mobile phones, watches, tablets, and smart screens, and 100 million are all kinds of terminal devices for ecological partners.

Not long ago, Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, called on the company's employees to "dare to lead the world trend" in the software field. The reason why he focused on the software business was that "we will have greater independence and autonomy" in the future development of this field.

Next, Huawei will continue to open a new situation on the software track while dealing with the hardware supply chain problems.

A new round of operating system competition

From the PC era to the mobile era, the world of operating systems has changed its owners, forming a situation in which the four major operating systems dominate the river and lake. Behind this is the competition among Google, Microsoft and apple. According to the report released by Guotai Junan, as of the first quarter of 2021, the market share of Android (Android), windows, IOS and MacOS in the world was 40.97%, 31.47%, 16.16% and 6.75% respectively.

The report further pointed out: "when we review the history of operating system development, we can find that once the market structure of a certain track operating system is determined, there is almost no possibility for the latecomer to overturn the market. Android is very strong in the mobile terminal, but it is still unable to participate in the competition in the PC market, because the latecomers need to challenge the whole industry ecology of the forerunner. Now, the number of Android developers worldwide has reached 20 million, and the number of IOS developers has reached 24 million. It is hard for latecomers to change the lives of tens of millions of people. "

For Hongmeng, a newcomer, Huawei's mission was not to become another Android at the beginning, but to target the operating system in the era of Internet of things. Mobile phone is only an important scene of Hongmeng, and its journey is still connected with everything. This is similar to Google's latest operating system fuchsiaos. It is reported that fuchsiaos has been launched on the first generation nest hub a week ago, taking the lead in smart home scenario applications.

On the one hand, the shipment of smart phones has peaked and declined, and dividends are disappearing, while more opportunities appear in the era of IOT; On the other hand, the current IOT ecological development is very slow, and efficient operating systems are needed to break through the barriers between devices and reduce development costs. Therefore, the next generation of operating systems has already begun.

After losing the PC and mobile era, can China have more say in the industry in the next era of Internet of things? Some people in the industry believe that harmonyos has a chance to really open the first year of China's operating system.

With the development of harmonyos from IOT to mobile phone and PC, harmonyos is the first commercial operating system for domestic IT enterprises. It is not that no one has challenged Google and apple in the development of mobile operating systems. Microsoft, Samsung, and Alibaba OS have all failed. In the absence of Sino US science and technology frictions, Ali and Meizu's attempts were directly suppressed by Google's warning, and there was no more room for them. With Samsung's size and technical strength, it is not difficult to rebuild an operating system, but how to continue the cooperation with Google is always a dilemma, involving various constraints and legal agreements.

For Huawei, there is no way out for harmonyos after the chip is cut off. But from another perspective, why is the time ripe? At this point in time, it is reasonable for Huawei to push harmonyos to the front of the stage. The hardware supply chain has set up a "real gun" level, and the software level is in a desperate battle. It is no longer necessary to consider how to deal with the relationship with Android, IOS and windows ecology. No matter what the external evaluation is, Huawei has taken a key step, daring to launch and explore commercialization, which is already on the card table.

New opportunities for hardware and software

Although harmonyos is still in its early stage of development, its partners are expanding rapidly, and manufacturers in the field of smart home are the first to join in. For example, home brands such as Midea, Jiuyang, boss electric appliances, seabird technology have carried harmonyos.

Guotai Junan report points out that at present, almost all domestic home appliance manufacturers have completed or are in the process of negotiation with Huawei Hongmeng. China has the world's leading home appliance manufacturing capacity, and the "made in China + Huawei Hongmeng" mode will become a powerful assistant for Hongmeng to participate in the core operating system competition in the IOT era in the future.

In addition to hardware manufacturers, domestic software companies have also joined hands with Hongmeng. Soochow Securities said that at present, Huawei eco chain and Hongmeng system related companies include application programs such as Jinshan Office (office software), Wanxing Technology (video editing), Netcom software (Huawei video), Caixun (mail system), hypergraph software (GIS), Siwei tuxin (map), etc Kelan software (Huawei wallet) as well as related categories such as Dongfang Tong (Middleware), Zhongke Chuangda (system development), Runhe software (multi chip platform adaptation), Changshan Beiming (ISV), Chengmai Technology (software development), beixinyuan (Mobile Security) and gaoweida (jinrongyun).

Among them, on June 2, Wanxing technology, the leader of digital creative software, formally cooperated with Huawei, and Wanxing meow became the world's first Huawei tablet Huawei matepad Pro equipped with harmonyos 2, the only pre installed video creative software. After the hd2.0 version of Wanxing meow film was launched at Huawei's press conference, it was put on the shelves of Huawei's online stores at the same time, and more than 8000 offline stores were launched with Huawei's flat panel samples.

Patrick, head of Wanxing science and technology strategic development department, told 21st century economic reporter: "Wanxing meow hd2.0 integrates Huawei HMS technology, and supports mutual access and resource sharing between different types of devices. This means that in the version of Huawei tablet made by Wanxing meow, users can realize cross terminal file transmission between Huawei mobile phone, PC and Huawei pad, as well as some collaborative editing capabilities. " For harmonyos 2, Patrick said that compared with the traditional system, the architecture of Hongmeng system has great innovation, and it has strong AI capability. It also expects to be more perfect in the future.

More changes will be made at the bottom. Currently, Wintel on PC is still stable, but "MacOS + arm" and "windows + arm" are surging; The mobile world is still dominated by "Android + arm" and "IOS + arm". With the advancement of harmonyos and new architecture, a new alliance is forming. Some people in the chip industry told the 21st century economic report that in the future, "harmonyos + risc-v" will usher in opportunities, especially in the field of IOT, and more and more domestic manufacturers will participate.

Ecological construction has a long way to go

As we all know, the difficulty of operating system is not technology, but ecology. It is related to software, hardware and most important developers. Huawei is facing challenges.

Some people in the software industry pointed out to reporters: "generally, three factors should be considered when entering the operating system. One is the hardware level, the second is the middle layer development system, and the third is the upper application ecology, including the application of its own fist and partners. Now, harmonyos has the core elements. But we will also wait and see, for example, how many third-party participants will be outside Huawei; What business value can Huawei bring to developers and application companies; In addition, there are hardware support, development tools and other issues

Of course, Huawei is also making every effort to attract global developers to prosper the ecology. On the one hand, Huawei emphasizes the characteristics and advantages of harmonyos, emphasizing full scene, distributed technology, new atomization ability, etc; On the other hand, developers have made great contributions to the digital world, and the industry has a conventional share. Huawei has also launched the Yaoxing plan and the sea going plan to support developers. Previously, some developers told the 21st century economic report that Huawei has given great support to developers. In terms of profit sharing scheme, after entering the Huawei Gallery application market, especially when the application volume is small in the initial stage, for about a year, all the profits belong to the developers. In addition, under normal circumstances, Huawei will give 85% to developers, which gives more benefits than apple charges 30%.

At the same time, the cultivation of software talents is also the key. At present, Huawei has announced to launch the talent cultivation plan of harmonyos colleges and universities, which will promote more than 15 harmony OS courses into colleges and universities, and cultivate more backup forces for the full stack development of harmonyos through three harmoyos related developer competitions each year. According to reports, in the recent competition, more than 10000 contestants from more than 3000 teams participated in the competition, and more than 25000 developers participated in the competition learning, and finally 23 teams won the prize.

As far as developers are concerned, their demands are also very direct, focusing on the practical convenience and benefits. It depends on whether the large factories are determined to stick to the investment, are willing to pay in the early stage, and whether they bring commercial value. The aforementioned software personage told reporters: "when choosing software and open source packages, I will first look at the release notes and see the updated version and community situation. As far as IOS development tools are concerned, Apple's complete set of default specification documents will be invested heavily. As long as developers configure a computer and development tools and develop according to the standard, they can achieve drag and drop development, and apple can manage the revenue and so on. But they charge 30% fee. At that time, a large number of developers did not do Windows development and turned to IOS development. In the golden age of five years ago, When software is put into the apple market, it is easy to have a large number of users and income. "

From the perspective of Huawei's layout, Huawei is determined to carry out systematic research and development in HMS, compiler and even programming language in addition to Hongmeng. It is worth looking forward to how harmonyos can further expand its kernel, middle layer and application layer.