Completely cut from Android, the success or failure of the HarmonyOS ecosystem has entered a "critical moment" | Titanium Media Focus

The complete cutting of Hongmeng and Android has entered the second stage.

On January 18, Huawei announced that the HarmonyOS NEXT HarmonyOS Galaxy Edition developer preview is open for developers to apply, this version of the HarmonyOS system removes the underlying code of Android, and only supports the HarmonyOS kernel and the application of the HarmonyOS system. This means that the HarmonyOS system is trying to establish a new software application ecology, and the development of third-party native applications has entered the landing stage.

Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of Device BG, and Chairman of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, said, "In 2020, I proposed that 'no one can extinguish the starry sky', and with the joint efforts of many partners and developers, the HarmonyOS ecosystem has become a big trend. As an all-scenario operating system for the Internet of Everything, the HarmonyOS ecosystem belongs to every developer. "Up to now, the number of HarmonyOS ecological devices has increased from 700 million to 800 million in five months.

Huawei said that the first batch of more than 200 application vendors are currently developing HarmonyOS native applications, and it hopes to build 5,000 HarmonyOS native applications with partners in 2024. According to the plan, Huawei will launch a developer beta version (beta) in the second quarter, and a commercial version in the fourth quarter. At that time, the Huawei Mate 70 series may be equipped with the native HarmonyOS system.

16%, a key indicator of the success or failure of Hongmeng

Within Huawei, a market share of 16% is considered the life-and-death line of the HarmonyOS system. The market share is more than 16%, which means that the HarmonyOS can rely on the power of the ecosystem and gradually grow.

According to Couterpoint data, in the third quarter of 2023, the market share of HarmonyOS in China's smartphone market reached 13%, a year-on-year increase of 6 percentage points, which is not much different from the standard of 16%.

After that, HarmonyOS wants to continue to expand its market share, on the one hand, it depends on the continuous growth of sales of Huawei mobile phones, tablets and other terminal devices, and on the other hand, it depends on how many third-party native application developers the HarmonyOS ecosystem can absorb. Because as the HarmonyOS native system is no longer compatible with Android applications, developers need to re-build the HarmonyOS system to do custom development of software applications.

In order to attract more developers to join the HarmonyOS ecosystem, Huawei announced during HDC 2023 that it will invest RMB 10 billion in the next three years to provide partners with a full range of resources, including technical support, marketing, and business cooperation.

At the press conference, Zhu Yonggang, President of Huawei Device Cloud, said, "Huawei will launch the 7 billion+ RMB "Bright Star Plan" to continue to encourage ecological innovation such as HarmonyOS native applications, meta services, and SDKs, and will work with enterprises, universities, institutions and other partners to cultivate 100,000+ HarmonyOS developers every month." ”

A front-end developer told Titanium Media App that the future growth space of Huawei's mobile phones, tablets and other terminal devices is actually the most important source of development power. "No one can ignore the popularity of the Huawei Mate 60 series in 2023. With Huawei's return to the end market, the incremental space it can bring to application vendors is considerable. This will also allow developers to take the initiative to join the ecosystem. ”

In September 2023, Huawei opened the pre-sale of the flagship model of the year, the Mate 60 Pro, without any official warm-up. The pre-sale is divided into two channels, online by HUAWEI Mall to accept flash purchase pre-orders, offline is only available in a few stores in Shenzhen. According to Tech Finance Network, as of September 1, Huawei Mate 60 Pro has sold a total of about 800,000 units online and offline, setting a number of new historical records for Huawei mobile phones.

Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at Tianfeng International Securities, said that the demand for Huawei's Mate 60 Pro model was higher than expected, and the shipment volume in the second half of 2023 was raised to 6 million units, an increase of 20%. At the same time, data from Omdia, a market research institution, shows that Huawei will ship 28 million mobile phones in 2022. In 2023, Huawei raised its mobile phone shipment target to 40 million units.

According to public information, Huawei's smartphone sales target for 2024 is 60 million to 70 million units.

The birth of HarmonyOS from beginning to end

In fact, unlike today's HarmonyOS NEXT, which is firmly moving towards independence, HarmonyOS did not reach an internal consensus at the beginning of the project.

According to public reports, in May 2016, Huawei's Consumer BG Software Department began to develop a distributed operating system version 1.0. In May 2017, the development of the 1.0 version of the operating system was completed, and the software department continued to develop the 2.0 version. At that time, there was no consensus within Huawei's Consumer BG to develop its own operating system, but Huawei had a set of internal R&D mechanisms to encourage innovation, and the decision-making power was in the hands of the software department, so that the development of operating systems could be carried out continuously.

In 2017, Huawei's consumer business grew rapidly. This year, Huawei sold a total of 153 million mobile phones, ranking first in China with a market share of 20.4%. In the face of rapid growth, Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, began to worry - is there any potential risk to the business?

At the beginning of 2018, Ren Zhengfei and his assistant listened to the business reports of various departments of the consumer BG one by one. Internally, Huawei believes that if Huawei wants to achieve a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars in the future, it will be too stressful to go it alone, so can it let its partners follow suit?

Ren Zhengfei agreed with this line of thinking. In May 2018, the self-developed distributed operating system received investment from Huawei Consumer BG and became an official project. The following year, the system was named "HarmonyOS".

Different from Android's macro kernel architecture, HarmonyOS uses a microkernel architecture, which allows a variety of devices to be directly connected through the system without the need for App integration. This has been reflected in the Wenjie model, after the owner's Huawei mobile phone comes into contact with the car machine, information and data can be quickly transferred between the mobile phone and the car. The music that is playing on the mobile phone can be played automatically after the user enters the car without operating the car machine system.

According to the latest progress of HarmonyOS NEXT, HarmonyOS native applications have the characteristics of native multi-terminal, which can automatically adapt to the screen size and layout of various devices such as straight board computers, folding screens, and tablets. Without the need for additional adaptation from developers, users can get a consistent experience across multiple devices.

"The HarmonyOS ecosystem will enter the second phase, and we look forward to working with more developers to accelerate the application of HarmonyOS in thousands of industries. Zhu Yong, President of Huawei Device Cloud, said that it is expected that by the end of this year, 5,000 applications will complete the native HarmonyOS development, and the goal of the future HarmonyOS ecosystem is to support 500,000 applications. (This article was first published on the Titanium Media App, by |.) Rao Xiangyu Editor |