Huawei also has developed its own chipsets
for low-end smartphones and servers,
though it still needs U.S. vendors for its most
advanced products.
Yu said Huawei’s first device using HarmonyOS
would be released this week under its
Honor brand.
Huawei, headquartered in the southern city of
Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, reported earlier its
smartphone shipments rose 24% in the first half
of 2019 over a year ago to 118 million.
“We could have done better, but due to the
challenges we face in the international market,
our shipments dropped a bit,” Yu said.
Huawei reported that sales in the six months
through June rose 23.2% over a year earlier to
401.3 billion yuan ($58.3 billion). That was up
from 2018 growth of 19.5%, but Chairman Liang
Hua warned Huawei will “face difficulties” in the
second half.
Liang said then that Huawei was reviewing its
product lineup to make sure it could fill orders
without U.S. components if necessary.
Yu said HarmonyOS is designed to operate
on PCs and tablet computers as well as
smartphones, allowing users to integrate music
and other functions across multiple devices.
HarmonyOS will be open source to allow
outside developers to contribute to its
development, Yu said.
“We want to build a global operating system, so
it will not be used by Huawei alone,” he said.
Huawei Technologies Ltd.: http://www.huawei.com