Huawei releases homegrown HarmonyOS NEXT operating system

SHENZHEN - Chinese tech giant Huawei on Tuesday released HarmonyOS NEXT, its self-developed operating system built independent of Android architecture.

The launch event in Shenzhen, where the company is based, marks another milestone for Huawei since Washington put it on the "Entity List" in 2019, barring it from doing business with US firms including Google, which provides Android.

HarmonyOS NEXT is the fifth iteration of HarmonyOS. HarmonyOS has been installed on over 1 billion devices, said Yu Chengdong, Huawei's executive director, at the event.

Yu said that HarmonyOS NEXT is truly independent from Android and Apple's iOS, with its own operating kernel, programming language, AI framework and other features that were developed without using the Linux kernel or Android open-source code.

"HarmonyOS NEXT provides a new option and market space for the development of related industries around the world," he said, hailing it as an open, secure and efficient operating system.

Over the past year, Huawei worked with more than 10,000 domestic partners to develop HarmonyOS NEXT apps, helping build an innovative IT industrial chain, Yu said.

As an open-source operating system, HarmonyOS was first launched in August 2019 and has replaced iOS to become the second-largest mobile operating system on the Chinese market.

More than 15,000 applications and meta-services are available for use on HarmonyOS, according to Yu.

Industry insiders say a major advantage of HarmonyOS is its coordination of various platforms, including smartphones, cars and other intelligent devices.