The Chinese telecom company Huawei has already been in the headlines a lot recently, but it really deserves some more attention for its new Harmony OS, and some of those perusing today’s news might get some clues to what the future of interconnected devices will look like based on new reports about how Huawei plans to use Harmony.
Today’s headline is that while Huawei is set to introduce Harmony into new devices, it’s going to stick with an Android system for many of its flagship products, such as smartphones – at least for now.
After American attempts to cut Huawei out of domestic manufacturing and markets, ostensibly because of national security concerns, there was speculation that Huawei would at some point stop using Android, either by choice, or by force.
However, as of now, Huawei can still utilize the Google-backed platform for its products.
One key thing that lots of experts are talking about, though, is how Huawei may be looking to the future in designing Harmony to operate across an amazing variety of device setups.
Oliver Cragg at Android Authority calls this the “1+8+N” strategy, denominating the various parts of this equation by saying that 1 represents smartphones, 8 represents traditional device uses of a an operating system, and N represents all of this other Internet of Things items that are coming our way soon – smart toasters, smart dishwashers, etc.
With this in mind, Harmony’s microkernel open source operating system design starts to make a lot more sense.
In going over reasons for traditional hardware incompatibility, Cragg notes how a new system that works on a device-agnostic basis could prove very useful in the next wave of digital innovation.
“In concept, Huawei’s solution is simple:,” Cragg writes. “Make a secure OS that was decoupled from hardware that could work on all of these devices. The implementation of that concept, however, is far from simple.”
Although we now see reports that Huawei may be running out of time to utilize some American products contracted for its supply chain, many feel that it’s impossible to really segment of the global economy for the purposes of protectionism.
One key indicator will be the emergence of Harmony as a next-generation operating system for devices around the world. Keep an eye out!
