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David Carton
SHENZHEN, China (Reuters) – Packed into a small room, a drone, a bipedal robot, a supermarket cashier and other gadgets showcase China’s vision of the software future: one in which operating systems developed by state-sponsored overlord Huawei Technologies Co. will supplant Windows and Android.
The collection is kept at the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, a local government-owned institute that encourages authorities, businesses and hardware makers to develop software using Open Harmony, an open-source version of the operating system Huawei launched five years ago after U.S. sanctions led it to drop support for Google’s (NASDAQ:) Android.
Huawei’s recent top-selling smartphones are being seen as a sign of progress in China’s semiconductor supply chain, but the company has also quietly built up expertise in areas from operating systems to car software that are crucial to the Chinese government’s vision of technological self-sufficiency.
President Xi Jinping told the Communist Party’s elite Politburo last year that China must fight an uphill battle to localize operating systems and other technologies “as soon as possible” as the United States cracks down on exports of advanced semiconductors and other components.
OpenHarmony is now being widely promoted in China as the “national operating system” amid concerns that other major companies could be cut off from Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:) Windows and Android products on which many systems rely.
“This strategic move will likely erode market share for Western operating systems such as Android and Windows as domestic Chinese products become more widespread,” said Sunny Chung, an associate fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a U.S. defense policy group.
Huawei’s homegrown operating system, Harmony OS, is set to overtake Apple’s (NASDAQ:) iOS as the second-best-selling mobile operating system in China after Android in the first quarter of 2024, according to research firm Counterpoint. It is not available on smartphones outside China.
Huawei donated OpenHarmony’s source code to the nonprofit OpenAtom Foundation in 2020 and 2021 and no longer has control over OpenHarmony, according to internal memos and other announcements.
But both the innovation center and government documents often refer to OpenHarmony and HarmonyOS interchangeably as part of the broader Harmony ecosystem. The growth of HarmonyOS, expected to be released for PC this year or next, will help drive adoption of OpenHarmony, analysts said.
“Harmony has developed a powerful foundational OS for the future of Chinese devices,” Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, said at the start of Huawei’s developer conference last week.
Huawei did not respond to requests for further comment.
Self-sufficiency
Huawei first unveiled Harmony in August 2019, three months after the United States imposed trade restrictions on it over security concerns. Huawei denies that its equipment poses any risk.
Since then, China has stepped up its efforts at self-sufficiency, moving away from major code-sharing hub Github and promoting its local version, Gitee.
China banned the use of Windows on government computers in 2014 and now primarily uses Linux-based operating systems.
Microsoft’s president said this month that only about 1.5% of the company’s revenue comes from China.
Originally built on the open-source Android system, Huawei this year released its first “pure” version of HarmonyOS that no longer supports Android-based apps, a move that further isolates China’s app ecosystem from the rest of the world.
A report released last month by the Jamestown Foundation said Open Harmony’s owner, Open Atom, appears to be coordinating efforts among Chinese companies to develop practical alternatives to U.S. technology, including for defense applications such as satellites.
Beijing-based OpenAtom did not respond to a request for comment.
Open Source
In its 2023 annual report, Huawei said Open Harmony was the fastest-growing open source OS for smart devices last year, with more than 70 organizations contributing and more than 460 hardware and software products built across finance, education, aerospace, and industry.
Charlie Chen, deputy director of the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center, told Reuters the aim of open sourcing is to replicate Android’s success in eliminating licensing fees for users and give companies a customisable foothold for their products.
“Harmony will definitely grow into a mainstream OS and provide the world with an OS option other than iOS and Android,” he said. “China is learning from the West.”
Google, Apple and Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.
The Harmony ecosystem has strong support from Huawei’s home city of Shenzhen, which has historically been used as a testing ground for policies later adopted across China.
In addition to the Harmony Center that opened in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu, 10 more centers are planned to open in 10 more cities, according to a presentation for the Shenzhen center.
OpenHarmony’s key developers include Shenzhen Kaihong Digital, led by Wang Chenglu, a former Huawei employee known as the “godfather” of Harmony, and Chinasoft Group, which has worked on infrastructure software for the port of Tianjin and for coal mines in Shaanxi province, China’s biggest coal producer.
While OpenHarmony is largely confined to China, the Brussels-based open source group Eclipse Foundation said it is using it to develop a system called Oniro for use on mobile phones and IoT devices.
China has tried to build major open source projects in the past but struggled to gain support among developers, but Huawei’s growing smartphone market share and additional efforts to build a broader ecosystem give Harmony an advantage, analysts say.
Huawei’s Yu said this month that more than 900 million devices, including smartphones, watches and car systems, run on HarmonyOS, and 2.4 million developers are coding within the ecosystem.
“OpenHarmony will need more time and iterations before developers feel more confident working with it,” said Emma Shu, an analyst at research firm Canalys. “But the reputation, behavior and trust that HarmonyOS has gained will undoubtedly have a positive effect.”
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