The use of its own OS will mean it will no longer be reliant
on Android. The US sanctions banned Google from providing technical support to
new Huawei phones and access to Google Mobile Services, the bundle of developer
services upon which most Android apps are based.
It was not immediately clear if it will be launching new
smartphones at the same time or if there will be updates for existing phones or
how fast the rollout might occur.
The new Harmony OS will only go some way to mitigating the
impact of the 2019 sanctions that also barred Huawei from accessing critical
US-origin technology, impeding its ability to design its own chips and source
components from outside vendors. Once the world's biggest smartphone maker,
Huawei now is ranked 6th globally with a 4% market share in the first quarter.
The previous Trump administration argued that the Chinese
telecommunications giant posed a threat to U.S. national security—a charge that
Huawei has denied. Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei this week called on staff to "dare
to lead the world" in software in a bid to move into business areas that
can't be affected by US sanctions, according to an internal memo seen by
Reuters.
The company will need to take a more "open source"
approach to development and should try to attract more software experts from
overseas as part of the pivot, it said.