AUGUST 9, 2019 / Huawei Launches New Distributed Operating System, HarmonyOS at the Huawei Developer Conference

Huawei announces a new homegrown operating system called HarmonyOS. The Chinese tech giant launched the new OS during its developer conference on Friday, calling it “completely different from Android and iOS.” The company says HarmonyOS is a microkernel-based, distributed operating system designed to offer cohesive user experience across different devices, including smartphones, smartwatches, laptops, and smart home devices. The move comes following the US ban and the threat of Huawei losing access to Google’s Android operating system.

Huawei lists the following as the four distinct technical features of the new OS:

— Distributed architecture: “With HarmonyOS, app developers won’t have to deal with the underlying technology for distributed apps… Apps built on HarmonyOS can run on different devices while delivering a seamless, collaborative experience across all scenarios.”

— Up to five times more efficient: “HarmonyOS will address underperformance challenges with a Deterministic Latency Engine and high-performance Inter Process Communication (IPC). ... The microkernel can make IPC performance up to five times more efficient than existing systems.”

— Enhanced security, low latency: “HarmonyOS is the first OS to use formal verification in device TEE, significantly improving security. In addition, because the HarmonyOS microkernel has much less code (roughly one-thousandth the amount of the Linux kernel), the probability of attack is greatly reduced.”

— Develop once, deploy across multiple devices: “With a multi-device IDE, developers can code their apps once and deploy them across multiple devices, creating a tightly integrated ecosystem across all user devices.”