Huawei launches homegrown HarmonyOS Next, rivaling Android and iOS

Huawei Technologies Company Limited unveiled on Tuesday its homegrown operating system HarmonyOS Next without Android support, which marked China's first independently-developed operating system in rival to Google's Android and Apple's iOS systems.

Yu Chengdong, executive director of Huawei, said the operating system is developed totally independently and is now running in a staggering 1 billion plus devices.

"It only takes Huawei a year to travel the path that foreign companies have developed for years," Yu said.

HarmonyOS Next has been dubbed the "pure blood" version of Harmony, as it no longer supports Android applications.

He added that currently, more than 15,000 native applications and services have been launched, including applications from Tencent, ByteDance and JD.