In a small room, a drone, a bipedal robot, a supermarket checkout and other devices present a vision of China’s software future, where an operating system developed by national champion Huawei has replaced Windows and Android .
The collection is housed at the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center in the southern city of Shenzhen. This entity, owned by the local government, encourages authorities, companies and hardware manufacturers to develop software using OpenHarmony, a free version of the operating system that Huawei launched five years ago, after US sanctions ended support for Android, Google’s system.
While Huawei’s recent high-selling smartphone launches have been closely monitored for signs of progress in China’s chip supply chain, the company has also been quietly building its expertise in sectors crucial to Beijing’s vision of technological self-sufficiency, from operating systems to embedded software.
Last year, President Xi Jinping told the Communist Party Politburo that China must fight an uphill battle to localize operating systems and other technologies “as soon as possible,” as the United States restricts exports of advanced chips and other components.
OpenHarmony is now being widely promoted in China as a “national operating system,” amid concerns that other major companies could be separated from the Microsoft Windows and Android products that many systems rely on.
“This strategic move risks eroding the market share of Western operating systems such as Android and Windows in China as local products gain ground,” said Sunny Cheung, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a U.S. defense policy group.
In the first quarter of 2024, Huawei’s HarmonyOS, the company’s in-house version of its operating system, surpassed Apple’s iOS to become the second-best-selling mobile operating system in China, behind Android, according to research firm Counterpoint. It has yet to launch on smartphones outside China.
Huawei no longer controls OpenHarmony, having donated its source code to a nonprofit called OpenAtom Foundation in 2020 and 2021, according to an internal memo and other statements.
But innovation center and government documents often refer to OpenHarmony and HarmonyOS interchangeably, as part of a broader Harmony ecosystem. According to analysts, the growth of HarmonyOS, which is expected to roll out in PC version this year or next, will boost the adoption of OpenHarmony.
“Harmony has created a powerful and foundational operating system for the future of Chinese devices,” Richard Yu, president of Huawei’s consumer business group, said at the opening of a developer conference last week.
Huawei did not respond to a request for comment.
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
Huawei first unveiled Harmony in August 2019, three months after Washington placed it under trade restrictions over alleged security concerns. Huawei denies its equipment poses a risk.
Since then, China has stepped up its efforts at self-reliance, cutting itself off from the main code-sharing hub Github and championing a local version, Gitee.
China banned the use of Windows on government computers in 2014, and these now primarily use Linux-based operating systems.
Microsoft generates only about 1.5% of its revenue from China, its president said this month.
Huawei launched its first “pure” version of HarmonyOS this year, which no longer supports Android-based apps, further separating China’s app ecosystem from the rest of the world.
According to a report from the Jamestown Foundation released last month, OpenHarmony’s owner, OpenAtom, appears to be coordinating efforts by Chinese companies to develop a viable alternative to American technologies, including for defense applications such as satellites.
OpenAtom, which is headquartered in Beijing, did not respond to a request for comment.
OPEN SOURCE
OpenHarmony was the fastest-growing open-source operating system for smart devices last year, with more than 70 organizations contributing to it and over 460 hardware and software products built across finance, education, aerospace, and industry, Huawei said in its 2023 annual report.
The goal of opening up the system is to replicate the success of Android by removing licensing costs for users and giving companies a customizable springboard for their own products, Charlie Cheng, deputy director of the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center, said during the Reuters visit.
“Harmony will definitely become a mainstream operating system and will give the world a new choice of operating system besides 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 enjoyed strong support from Huawei’s home city of Shenzhen, which has historically served as a testing ground for policies subsequently adopted across China.
In addition to the opening of a Harmony center in the southwestern city of Chengdu, ten more are expected to open in ten other cities, according to a presentation by the Shenzhen center.
OpenHarmony’s main developers include Shenzhen Kaihong Digital, led by Wang Chenglu, a former Huawei employee known as the “godfather” of Harmony, and Chinasoft. Both worked on infrastructure software at the port of Tianjin and for mines in Shaanxi province, China’s largest coal producer.
While OpenHarmony is largely confined to China, the Eclipse Foundation, a Brussels-based free software group, said it was using it to develop a system called Oniro for mobile phones and Internet of Things devices.
China’s previous efforts to build large open-source projects have struggled to gain traction among developers, but Huawei’s growing market share in the smartphone market and additional work to develop a broader ecosystem give to Harmony an advantage, according to analysts.
More than 900 million devices, including smartphones, watches and car systems, run HarmonyOS, while 2.4 million developers code in the ecosystem, Huawei’s Yu said this month .
“OpenHarmony will need more time and iterations for these developers to be more confident in their work with OpenHarmony,” said Emma Xu, an analyst at research firm Canalys. “But the reputation, demeanor and trust that HarmonyOS has gained will certainly have a positive effect. (Reporting by David Kirton; Editing by Jamie Freed)
