"Let me tell you." A few days ago, at the question session of Huawei's annual meeting of the financial report, whenever a question about Hongmeng was discussed, Liu Ping, Huawei's rotating CEO, would whisper to Meng Wanzhou's microphone.
Just the night before the conference, a news about the Russian smartphone company BQ and Huawei's Hongmeng system attracted attention from all walks of life.
According to the Russian Satellite News Agency, due to U.S. sanctions, Google has stopped authenticating smartphones running Android systems from Russian BQ.
According to the report, BQ is already testing the Hongmeng operating system developed by China's Huawei, and may release a new smartphone equipped with the Hongmeng operating system in the second half of 2022.
"Hongmeng sailed out to sea" brushed the screen overnight.
Overseas companies take the initiative to test the Hongmeng operating system developed by Huawei, which is undoubtedly a major benefit for Hongmeng, which needs to break new ground, but Huawei has little interest.
Just when the outside world speculated, Huawei officials responded quickly, "At present, there is no plan to launch a mobile phone equipped with HarmonyOS overseas." ”
At the business performance press conference in the afternoon, another reporter asked about this matter, and Liu Ping also eagerly denied it.
Subsequently, the news about "Huawei denied that Hongmeng went to sea" was also overwhelming, and the fantasy of the melon-eating masses failed, what medicine was sold in Huawei's gourd?
The deep meaning of denial
First of all, in Huawei's response, it is clear that it will not launch mobile phones equipped with HarmonyOS overseas for the time being, which does not mean that the Hongmeng system will not appear in the overseas mobile phone market.
Because the Hongmeng system is divided into OpenHarmony and HarmonyOS, there is actually a difference between the two externally.
Official information shows that there are actually two versions of the Hongmeng system. One is the commercial version of HarmonyOS that Huawei uses itself, and the other is the open source OpenHarmony. In Huawei's own words, "it will not provide a commercial version, but it does not restrict the use of open source versions."
OpenHarmony is the equivalent of Android's AOSP, which can be provided to mobile phone manufacturers to develop their own UIs on this basis, such as Xiaomi's MIUI based on AOSP.
In the same way, the Russian BQ company can of course also develop its own UI system on OpenHarmony, Huawei's previous statement is to allow such behavior, and if BQ or other overseas mobile phone manufacturers have openHarmony-based UI, to some extent, it can also be understood that a derivative version of the Hongmeng system appeared in overseas markets.
Secondly, for Huawei has been affirming that it will not release mobile phones equipped with harmonyOS systems in overseas markets for the time being, some insiders have analyzed that the reason why Huawei has done this is inseparable from the upstream supply cut and the overseas market environment.
Since 2019, the US government has imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Huawei, resulting in its high-end mobile phone series products being "corelessly available", and its market share has declined all the way, and even the output cannot be guaranteed.
According to a report released by Omdia, a well-known data agency, although Huawei suffered US sanctions in 2020, falling from second to third, the production of smartphones is still as high as 190 million units. After coming to 2021, Huawei's mobile phone production will drop sharply to 35 million units, and its global market share will shrink from 15% in 2020 to 3% in 2021, even lagging behind Motorola.
In addition to the sanctions on the chip, Huawei has also suffered from Google's supply cuts so far, resulting in the newly released mobile phone products can not be pre-installed to use Google GMS services, and models released after May 2019 can not directly obtain Google's official Android system updates, including Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Play Store and other applications and services. This is a fatal blow to the experience of overseas mobile phone users.
Insufficient supply in production, coupled with Google's sanctions, has made Huawei mobile phones in a desperate situation in overseas markets. In this case, it is difficult to promote a new system that is not yet known, and it may even be possible to die before the teacher is successful.
Therefore, Huawei will not release Hongmeng mobile phones overseas for the time being, which is more related to the current embarrassing situation.
Hongmeng is at sea
After this "BQ incident", not going to the sea for the time being seems to have become the common perception of Hongmeng by the outside world. However, Huawei's actions and Liu Ping's speech reveal everywhere that going to sea is actually the trend of the times.
At the annual meeting, Liu Ping's expression of Hongmeng's overseas market was "Hongmeng will not be launched overseas for the time being", but it is worth noting that after saying this sentence for about two seconds, Liu Ping hurriedly added "mobile phone, mobile phone".
It is not difficult to see that Huawei is extremely strict about Hongmeng going to sea, and it has been repeatedly emphasized that Hongmeng mobile phones will not go to sea.
However, the Hongmeng system is essentially an operating system covering all intelligent hardware scenarios, not a simple mobile phone system, and Huawei has long planned to release products equipped with the Hongmeng system overseas.
In 2019, Huawei held a media event in London, UK, and introduced the Hongmeng system. At that time, Peter Gauden, senior manager of Huawei's global products, revealed that after Hongmeng debuted on the Honor smart screen, the first products to land in overseas markets are expected to include smart watches and laptops.
It can be understood that the Hongmeng system has been a determined strategy three years ago, of course, this is also the road that Huawei must take.
With the trend of the Internet of Things improving, it has become a consensus in the industry that the operating system has ushered in changes. Because the well-known Android and iOS systems belong to the macro kernel, simply put, it is to integrate a lot of things into the kernel, various processes and kernels are highly compact, can not take out some of the functions alone, even if only a line of code, but also have to recompile the entire system.
With the gradual increase in smart devices, and the macro kernel module correlation is too strong, can not take out a small part of the module to run, so if you want to interconnect between smart devices, you must develop a set of operating systems for each device, which is not a good solution for both manufacturers and developers.
Microkernel is more low-level than the macro kernel, only provides the most basic core functions, its core module is relatively independent, what modules need to be added directly, independent of each other does not affect, do not have to worry about the cooperation between modules, so the microkernel-based system or software is more convenient for cross-platform interconnection, so the microkernel has also become the direction of the next development iteration of the industry.
At present, Google is already developing Fuchsia, a next-generation operating system based on microkernels; Apple's operating system is mainly a hybrid kernel based on macro kernels, and it is also introducing some microkernels to move in this direction.
And Hongmeng OS, which is born with a microkernel, wants to not fall behind in the next generation of operating system card slots, or even lead Google and Apple, it needs to be rolled out in the market as soon as possible.
For Huawei, Hongmeng OS goes to sea, on the one hand, it can temporarily stabilize the brand influence overseas, on the other hand, it is to prepare for the future to roll out the huge Internet of Things ecology of Hongmeng, which can be said to be two birds with one stone, but Hongmeng OS wants to live overseas, and the difficulties that need to be passed through are still heavy.
Walk alone in the dark alley
Overseas markets are not unfamiliar to Huawei, and since 2001, when Ren Zhengfei shouted "majestic, angry, and across the Pacific", Huawei has begun to cultivate around the world.
However, because Huawei started with a communication business, the overseas market has always been supported by the communication business, and it was not until the development of smart phones in recent years that Huawei has been exposed to the overseas consumer business market.
But just when the mobile phone business is expected to peak the world, various over-the-counter factors have taken turns, and Huawei's overseas C-end business has also returned to the pre-liberation period overnight.
The big winds and waves experienced in the overseas market have made Huawei particularly sophisticated, but even so, Hongmeng OS will encounter some substantive problems when going to sea.
First, let's look at the Hongmeng OS on the phone. For the foreign mobile phone market, the status of GMS services can be said to be very important. Because the foreign Android system has basically been ruled by Google, and the GMS account is similar to a pass for a series of services owned by Google.
If foreign software developers want to publish an app on the Android system, they must pass Google's GMS certification and audit to be able to publish it, and can only be published in the Google Mall, which means that Google almost monopolizes the supply side of overseas Android mobile applications.
Hongmeng OS cannot provide GMS services, and the software ecology of its own development of HMS is far less huge than that of GMS, and consumers will not be willing to give up the Google ecosystem for Huawei. With this alone, Hongmeng OS is difficult to roll out among overseas users.
However, as mentioned above, Hongmeng OS is an Internet of Things operating system, in the "1+8+N" ecological construction proposed by Hongmeng, the mobile phone system cannot break the current pattern in a short time, but 8 and n still have points that can be cut into.
Compared with the domestic market, the overseas Internet of Things market is developing slowly, which also means that Hongmeng OS can have greater development potential and faster development speed overseas.
Smart screens, smart watches and other IoT products in the software ecological development, than smart phones, and many consumers will not use GMS services on these products, so Google's blockade is not a big impact on it, these IoT products equipped with Hongmeng OS, in the experience is not worse than other systems.
However, for Huawei, if it wants to enter the overseas market from 8 and n, it means that it needs to introduce a large number of industrial partners, let more terminal equipment manufacturers choose Hongmeng OS, launch more applications and products adapted to the Hongmeng system, and provide users with more diversified services and content.
According to the list of partners disclosed by Huawei, 21 product companies such as Midea, Jiuyang, Suber, Boss, and Fangtai have equipped with Hongmeng operating system. However, the main markets of these companies are in China, and the help to Hongmeng OS is limited in the development of overseas markets.
In addition, Huawei's own smart screen, smart watches and other IoT products in overseas market sales are not outstanding, if you can not reach cooperation with enterprises that are deeply rooted in overseas markets, Hongmeng OS will most likely usher in a situation of walking alone in the dark alley after going to sea.
For Huawei, the development of an operating system can be said to be not too difficult in technology, as Academician Ni Guangnan said, "To create an operating system, technology is not difficult, it is difficult in ecology." How many ecosystem partners are involved is key.
Wang Chenglu, the "trader" of the Previous Hongmeng System, said in an interview with the media that Huawei analyzed the ecological development of the PC industry and the mobile industry in the past two decades and found that 16% of the market share is a watershed, and more than 16% of the ecology is basically successful.
But Huawei's expectations for Hongmeng must not only cross this watershed, it will only be a matter of time before it is time to go to sea in an all-round way, and from the IoT product, I don't know how to go smoothly?
Author 丨 Wang Siyuan Editor 丨 Yi page