Huawei has finally announced the fully domestic version of its HarmonyOS, completely cutting ties with Android.
Harmony began life as a small-footprint OS for IoT devices and home appliances. But since the US cut Huawei's access to Google Mobile Services, it has been steadily upgraded to support smartphones.
HarmonyOS has made some progress, overtaking iOS to be no.2 in the Chinese market, while worldwide it had a 4% market share in Q1, according to Counterpoint.
At the launch event two weeks ago Richard Yu, the head of Huawei's device business group, dropped some more numbers. Yet these really expose the platform's limitations.
For one, Harmony is said to be installed on more than a billion devices. In reality, most of those are IoT terminals, and almost all are in China. The real work is to put Harmony on the smartphone, the human race's favorite personal device.