HarmonyOS, the self-developed operating system by Huawei has been in development for 3 years. Last year, the company officially announced its first version at the HUAWEI DEVELOPER CONFERENCE (HDC) 2019. At the 2020 edition of this conference, the firm is expected to unveil its second version. Rumors said that the Chinese telecom giant will release a smartphone running it by the end of this year. But now, Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group officially confirms that there will be no such smartphone from the company this year.
Yu Chengdong, commonly known as Richard Yu recently attended Yabuli Forum Qingdao Summit (via Sina). At this meeting, he was questioned regarding Huawei smartphone powered by HarmonyOS.
To this, he replied that there are no plans to release such device this year. But that does not mean it will not release next year. In other words, the executive reiterated his HarmonyOS announcement speech from last year.
In that, he mentioned that Android is their choice of operating system on smartphones due to the ecosystem and partners. But they will continue to develop and release devices with HarmonyOS in order to be self-reliant in the long run.
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Vincent Yang, Senior Vice President at Huawei made a similar statement last year that they will maintain a single ecosystem with Android. But HarmonyOS will continue to exist as plan B in case of a worst-case scenario.
Also, since the CEO was interviewed in the hallway of the venue of the Summit, he did not respond properly to the chip problem. But he did say that they are still looking for a solution.
Currently, Huawei’s operating system can be only found on its smart TVs. But according to the roadmap shared by the company last year, HarmonyOS 2.0 will support PC, cars, and smart wearables. This version is expected to go official at HDC 2020, which is scheduled for September 10-12.
Though there will be no smartphone running HarmonyOS this year, we can still look forward to the rumored Mate Watch featuring it.
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