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Author Ni Yuqing

Editing Zhang Mingxin

Figure source data map

The ecological campaign of pure HarmonyOS officially started.

On January 18th, Huawei announced that the developer preview of HarmonyOS NEXT HarmonyOS Xinghe Edition is open to developers, and will launch the developer Beta version in the second quarter of this year and the commercial version in the fourth quarter.

The NEXT version is the pioneer of pure HarmonyOS. From its beginning, HarmonyOS operating system only supports native applications and is no longer compatible with Android applications. At this point, HarmonyOS has entered the second stage of development, and the truly independent ecology of HarmonyOS has set sail.

At present, the number of ecological devices in HarmonyOS has exceeded 800 million. Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei, CEO of terminal BG and chairman of BU, a smart car solution, said: "The number of ecological devices in HarmonyOS has increased from 700 million to 800 million in just five months, and the Internet of Everything will open a new blue ocean of trillion-dollar industries."

In the future, ecological prosperity needs to join hands with more developers, and Huawei has set a goal. Zhu Yonggang, president of Huawei Terminal Cloud, said: "By the end of 2024, 5,000 apps have joined the HarmonyOS ecosystem, and the final sea of stars is more than 500,000 applications."

Another important foundation of the new journey is the support of hardware. With the return of Huawei mobile phones, the industry’s expectations for HarmonyOS are also increasing. TechInsights predicts that in 2024, global smartphone sales will rebound by over 3% year-on-year, and Android and Apple iOS will continue to maintain a dominant position in the world, but their market share in China will be eroded by Huawei’s HarmonyOS operating system. From 2024, Harmony OS Harmony OS will become the second largest smartphone operating system in China market.

Pure HarmonyOS starts.

HarmonyOS operating system can be basically divided into two categories. The first category is consumer-oriented operating system and application development, which is led by Huawei. The second category is to hand over industry-oriented applications to OpenHarmony open source organizations and attract major professional software companies to develop for specific industries. Huawei is the core open source contributor.

Among them, in the consumer-oriented market, it is clear that HarmonyOS will no longer be compatible with Android in the future, forming an "independent" ecology. Therefore, developers need to develop APPlications for the HarmonyOS operating system alone. In the past six months, major app applications have been joining in, and each company will start development based on this version of HarmonyOS NEXT.

Not long ago, Yu Chengdong issued a letter to all employees, saying: "2024 is a crucial year for native HarmonyOS. It is necessary to accelerate the development of various native applications in HarmonyOS and focus on winning the two most arduous battles of technology base and tripartite ecology."

On the one hand, from the ecological point of view, the native HarmonyOS ecology has ushered in the first year, and since 2023, head Internet applications have joined the HarmonyOS ecology. According to Huawei, more than 200 head applications have accelerated the native development of HarmonyOS, and the native application layout has taken shape. Many partners, such as Ant Group and China UnionPay, have opened up their vertical innovation capabilities, and together with HarmonyOS, provided developers with full-link development tools to further accelerate the development of native applications in HarmonyOS.

Specifically, more than 200 applications cover 18 fields such as games, social communication, travel navigation, business office, travel and accommodation, including Internet giants such as Alipay, Netease Games, Meituan, Nail, and JD.COM, as well as head enterprises in the fields of finance, life services, hotels and telecom operators such as China Mobile, UnionPay, Bank of Communications, China Construction Bank, McDonald’s, Tongcheng Travel, China Air China, etc.

On the other hand, from the technical point of view, Yu Chengdong said at the press conference that HarmonyOS NEXT does not rely on the traditional Unix kernel and Linux kernel, but on the independent HarmonyOS kernel. This also means that the HarmonyOS operating system will eventually get rid of the Linux kernel and the AOSP code of Android, and become a "pure HarmonyOS". Of course, such a switch still needs a process.

According to Huawei, the HarmonyOS kernel will surpass the traditional kernel, be more adaptable to the diversified requirements of the whole scene equipment, and be more flexible, safer and smoother. Huajin Securities analyzed that HarmonyOS system is expected to continue to expand its market share in the future by virtue of its three technological advantages of microkernel, distribution and meta-service. For example, unlike Android’s design based on Linux macro-kernel, HarmonyOS system adopts micro-kernel architecture, which only keeps the most basic and core services at the kernel level, thus reducing the impact of single module error in the kernel on the whole system, which is superior to Android system in stability and easier to be modularized and expanded.

In addition to the kernel, Huawei has also built a full-stack technology system, including Pangu AI model, MindSporeAI framework, Ark compiler, Cang Xie programming language and other core technologies, which have become the basis of ecological construction. From the perspective of the global market, it is not easy to specialize in one field. There are only a handful of people who can truly achieve the full stack layout. Huawei has become an all-round player under great pressure.

Milestones and challenges

In the torrent of operating systems, global giants swarmed in, and most of them failed. In the end, only Android and iOS occupied the majority share in the mobile phone market, and now HarmonyOS is becoming a rising roof of the world. For Huawei, HarmonyOS is the choice that last stand has to make. At present, the ecological war is urgent.

TechInsights believes that "Huawei will make a solid recovery in 2024, reshuffle the smartphone operating system market in China, and seize the share of Apple and Android manufacturers. Huawei Harmony OS Harmony OS is expected to achieve the next milestone in 2024, when the revised version of HarmonyOS Next, which is incompatible with Android, will be put into commercial operation. "

At the same time, the report also pointed out that how to build an independent application ecosystem around "pure HarmonyOS" will be a new challenge for Huawei in the next few years. Huawei is cooperating with some mature Internet service providers, such as Tencent’s WeChat, Alibaba’s Alipay, Tik Tok, Didi, Meituan, China Telecom and China Industrial and Commercial Bank-they have developed or are developing apps for HarmonyOS in China market.

Ecological construction is not a day’s work, it will be a complex and lasting process, facing multi-dimensional challenges. First of all, for HarmonyOS, head application is an important indicator. At present, there are more than 200 apps officially announced, but WeChat has not made public information. It is understood that both parties are in continuous communication, but the migration and development of large-scale applications at the national level are very complicated and involve many benefits distribution.

A developer from HarmonyOS told 21st century business herald: "The development of large-scale applications such as WeChat and Tik Tok takes a long time and process, which may require thousands of people to invest. In this process, there will be many technical problems that need to be communicated and debugged. The cycle of redeveloping native applications and gradually iterative adaptation needs to be based on years, not simply across the board. "

Secondly, developers are most concerned about the development cost. Some Huawei technicians told reporters that the underlying interfaces and mechanisms have changed now, and the APP above should be redeveloped. Redevelopment means labor costs. "We can feel the fiery trend of HarmonyOS, and we are also preparing for it. We expect HarmonyOS to bring incremental growth, but at the same time, the real problem is that the current Internet industry is generally throttling, and redevelopment is facing cost allocation problems, so we are also watching while developing." A developer bluntly told reporters.

It can be seen that how to continue to attract developers and how to reduce costs and increase income for developers will also be the focus of ecological construction. Huawei also announced the "Yao Xing Plan", investing 7 billion yuan to encourage HarmonyOS developers to innovate in HarmonyOS native applications, meta-services, SDK, etc. At the same time, Huawei will jointly train more than 100,000 HarmonyOS developers every month, and start the 2024HarmonyOS Innovation Competition, with the highest single prize of 1 million yuan.

At the same time, Huawei itself is also facing the maintenance cost problem. The aforementioned developers pointed out that at present, Huawei should not only maintain a compatible version of Android, but also constantly strengthen the system of native applications. The cost of maintaining two systems at the same time is also very high. Now, as soon as Android is updated, HarmonyOS will upgrade and adapt. Huawei has a huge amount of hardware products, and it is also a heavy burden to support the stability system. Choosing pure HarmonyOS is not only the initial intention, commercial choice, but also the only way to be independent. The native application is prosperous, which is the real ecology.

In addition, the return of Huawei mobile phones is also the focus of attention. Hardware is an important foundation for the development of HarmonyOS, and it is also the confidence of developers. At present, there are still great challenges in overseas markets. With the recovery of mobile phones in the domestic market and the addition of thousands of applications in China, the software industry chain represented by HarmonyOS will also explore more stars.

SFC

Editor of this issue Liu Xueying Intern Zhao Fengling

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