After nearly two years of facing the ban from Google, Huawei is all set to take the global smartphone market by storm, once again. Huawei’s answer to Google Android, Harmony OS is finally ready for launch.
According to the latest update from the company, Huawei Harmony OS would be used in all upcoming Huawei smartphones as the company is banned from doing any sort of business with US companies.
This is not the first time when Huawei is going to showcase its Harmony OS though. The company has already released few TVs powered with Harmony OS in the last few months. But the real test of the OS will come when it would be made available with Smartphones.
After Huawei sold Honor, its budget smartphone brand, to Digital China for $15.2 billion late last year, rumours started making round about the possible exit of Huawei from the smartphone market due to the unavailability of any OS to power its smartphones.
After getting banned by the US in early 2019, the company tried to put a strong face by disclosing that the development of Google Android alternate is already under process. While the there were very few takers to the claim, the company decided to stay tight-lipped and didn’t reveal much information related to the development stage of Harmony OS then.
The impact of the US ban was so severe that Huawei’s smartphone shipments declined by 41% YoY to a mere 8.3% share in Q4 2020. The company slipped out from the list of the world’s top five smartphone manufacturers to settle at sixth position. Since the ban, the Chinese top smartphone manufacturer lost more than half of its market.
After nearly 2 years, the company appears to be all set to bounce back in the smartphone market with its own Harmony OS.
But the road to success for Huawei is not going to be easy, especially outside China. The initial preview of Harmony OS doesn’t seem to be very impressive as it looks no more than a generic version of Android 10. Build on forked Android, Harmony OS seems to be laggy as well, reveals Ars Technica.
But the technical glitches and performance is not the biggest challenge Huawei needs to deal with to make Harmony OS a success. Developing a complete app ecosystem and winning the confidence of the global app developers community is going to be a big battle to win – something that Microsoft and Samsung lost to Google Android measurably.
Therefore, it would be interesting to see if Huawei Harmony OS makes a global debut or meant to stay confined into China only.
