The collection is at the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Centre
in the southern city of Shenzhen, a local government-owned entity that
encourages authorities, companies and hardware makers to develop software using
OpenHarmony, an open-source version of the operating system Huawei launched
five years ago after US sanctions cut off support for Google's Android.
While Huawei's recent strong-selling smartphone launches
have been closely watched for signs of advances in China's chip supply chain,
the company has also quietly built up expertise in sectors crucial to Beijing's
vision of technology self-sufficiency from operating systems to in-vehicle
software, Reuters said.
President Xi Jinping last year told the Communist Party's
elite politburo that China must wage a difficult battle to localize operating
systems and other technology "as soon as possible" as the US cracks
down on exports of advanced chips and other components.
OpenHarmony is now being widely promoted within China as a
"national operating system" amid concerns that other major companies
could be severed from the Microsoft Windows and Android products upon which
many systems rely.
"This strategic move will likely erode the market share
of Western operating systems like Android and Windows in China, as local
products gain traction," said Sunny Cheung, an associate fellow at the
Jamestown Foundation, a US defense policy group.
In the first quarter of 2024, Huawei's HarmonyOS, the
company's in-house version of the operating system, surpassed Apple's iOS to
become the second best-selling mobile operating system in China behind Android,
research firm Counterpoint said. It has not been launched on smartphones
outside China.
Huawei no longer controls OpenHarmony, having gifted its
source code to a non-profit called the OpenAtom Foundation in 2020 and 2021,
according to an internal memo and other releases.
But both the innovation center and government documents
often refer to OpenHarmony and HarmonyOS interchangeably as part of a broader
Harmony ecosystem. The growth of HarmonyOS, expected to be rolled out in a PC
version this year or next, will spur adoption of OpenHarmony, analysts said.
"Harmony has created a powerful foundational operating
system for the future of China's devices," said Richard Yu, the chairman
of Huawei's consumer business group, at the opening of a developer conference
last week.
Huawei did not respond to a request for further 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 self-sufficiency
efforts, 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 they now use mostly Linux-based operating systems.
Microsoft earns only about 1.5% of its revenue from China,
its president said this month.
Originally built on an open source Android system, this year
Huawei launched its first "pure" version of HarmonyOS that no longer
supports Android-based apps, in a move that further bifurcates China's app
ecosystem from the rest of the world.
A report from the Jamestown Foundation last month said
OpenHarmony's owner OpenAtom appeared to be coordinating efforts among Chinese
firms to develop a viable alternative to US technologies, including for defense
applications such as satellites.
Beijing-based OpenAtom 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 more than 460 hardware and software products built
across finance, education, aerospace and industry, Huawei said in its 2023
annual report.
The aim of making it open source is to replicate Android's
success in removing licensing costs for users and to give companies a
customisable springboard for their own products, said Charlie Cheng, deputy
manager of the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Centre, when Reuters visited.
"Harmony will definitely grow into 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 seen strong support from Huawei's
home city of Shenzhen, a city historically used as a trial site for policies
later adopted across China.
Along with a Harmony center that opened in the southwestern
city of Chengdu, 10 more are expected in a further 10 cities, according to a
Shenzhen center presentation.
Key OpenHarmony developers include Shenzhen Kaihong Digital,
headed by Wang Chenglu, a former Huawei employee known as Harmony's
"godfather", and Chinasoft. Both have worked on infrastructure
software, at Tianjin Port and for mines in China's top coal-producing province
Shaanxi.
While OpenHarmony is largely confined to China,
Brussels-based open-source group the Eclipse Foundation said it was using it to
develop a system called Oniro for use in mobile phones and internet-of-things
devices.
China's previous efforts to build major open-source projects
have struggled to gain traction among developers, but Huawei's growing
smartphone market share and extra work to develop a broader ecosystem gives
Harmony an advantage, analysts said.
More than 900 million devices, including smartphones,
watches and car systems are running on HarmonyOS, while 2.4 million developers
were coding in the ecosystem, Huawei's Yu said this month.
"OpenHarmony will need more time and iterations so that
these developers will be more confident to work with OpenHarmony," said
Emma Xu, an analyst with research firm Canalys. "But the reputation,
behavior and confidence that HarmonyOS has achieved will definitely bring a
positive effect."