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From "shelling Android" to crossing the life-and-death line of 16% market share, Huawei's "hybrid Hongmeng" has completed its historical mission and started the process of curtain call.

"Pure Blood Hongmeng", which has taken over the baton, has less than half a year left before its official debut, but there are strange signals coming from the market.

Wang Chenglu, the "Father of Hongmeng" and former President of Huawei's Consumer BG Software Department, said in an interview that "16% market share is a watershed. An ecosystem that exceeds 16% is basically successful."

Data released by third-party agency Canalys showed that Huawei's shipments in the Chinese smartphone market reached 11.7 million units in the first quarter of 2024, ranking first in the Chinese smartphone market with a market share of 17%.

In the good news, at the 2024 Huawei Developer Conference on June 21, Yu Chengdong excitedly announced that the native Hongmeng system HarmonyOS NEXT, which uses a self-developed kernel, will no longer be compatible with Android applications.

However, Huawei's return to glory as the king of mobile phones was not yet stable, and its market performance in the second quarter declined rapidly. Its ranking in mobile phone activation volume dropped to fifth place, and it was surpassed by Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo one after another.

A more direct manifestation is that on July 18, Huawei officially announced that the price of the new Pura70 series, which had just been on the market for about three months, would drop directly, with the highest drop reaching 1,000 yuan. Influenced by this, Dong Yuhui, who had just appeared with Yu Chengdong to promote the product, urgently arranged for the anchor of "Walking with Hui" to apologize publicly in the live broadcast room, and said that consumers who bought Pura70 could directly contact customer service for a refund of the price difference.

The Pura70 series failed to replicate the miracle of the "proud machine" Mate60 series, and the next generation Mate70 has received bad news. Combined with the revelations of many well-known digital bloggers, it can be speculated that Huawei's new flagship Mate70 series this year may be delayed to the middle and lower stages of the fourth quarter compared to the previously leaked September due to the delay in the adaptation of the self-developed new system and new processor.

"Pure Blood Hongmeng" is in the intensive Beta test, and the arrow has been put on the string. As the hardware side of the bow, if it can't keep up with the pace, it may be possible to retreat after crossing the line of life and death.

Part.1

Once forced, once gambled

Huawei's Hongmeng has come a long way to where it is today, but from that moment on in 2019 it was forced to deviate from its original intention.

The Ark compiler originated from Huawei's 2012 laboratory project, and is the predecessor or cornerstone of HarmonyOS NEXT, which is now known as "China's own mobile phone operating system." The inspiration for the name Ark is said to be related to Zhou Zhide, the chief architect of the Open64 compiler, who was discovered by Huawei's US Research Institute. The homonym of this world-class authority's English name Fred Chow is Ark.

The initial application direction of Hongmeng system is to target various IoT hardware devices in the next era of the Internet of Everything, which has nothing to do with mobile phone operating systems. Lightweight and distributed became its early characteristics, which can be seen from the naming of LiteOS.

The turning point was naturally the much-talked-about US government ban in 2019. At that time, both Google and Huawei, holding on to a glimmer of last hope that was almost non-existent, continued to speak out to appease the market. In Yu Chengdong's words, Hongmeng system is still a backup plan for Huawei phones.

The ultimatum finally became a reality, and the spare tire urgently needs to be turned into a regular one. Hongmeng, who was appointed in a critical moment, has not yet left the laboratory, and the rumor that it was called a "PPT system" by the outside world is not completely groundless. In order to survive the difficult situation, the Hongmeng system had to be divided into two. OpenHarmony, known as the open source Hongmeng, continues to explore the path of independent kernels; HarmonyOS, developed on the basis of Android's AOSP, is compatible with Android applications and carries the burden of Huawei phones without high-end chips and Google GMS services. "Shell Android" is a portrayal of the latter.

In order to accelerate OpenHarmony, Wang Chenglu, the head of Hongmeng within Huawei, had to resign midway and take over the external Shenzhen OpenHarmony entity, which once triggered various speculations.

Now the offensive and defensive positions have changed. The combination of HarmonyOS and Kirin 9000S processor has allowed Huawei's Mate60 series to return to the Chinese market in one fell swoop, with a strong potential to overthrow Apple. However, the excellent performance of 17% market share is the life and death line that the "hybrid Hongmeng" has crossed. Where does the "pure Hongmeng" that hurriedly accelerated the test have the confidence to take over?

Rather than saying that Yu Chengdong is drifting, it is better to say that HarmonyOS NEXT must seize the only window of opportunity in 2024. From the second half of 2023, the Huawei storm jointly created by the Mate60 series of mobile phones and the Wenjie series of new energy vehicles is inseparable from the endogenous roots and the nationalist sentiments caused by the breakthrough of independent brands of high-end technology products.

Returning to the rational and objective comparison of product strength, Huawei and its rivals and competitors in the market can be said to have their own differentiated advantages, but it is difficult to achieve the point of being "far ahead" in all aspects. This is also the reason why Huawei issued a "no-speaking" instruction to Yu Chengdong.

The enthusiasm on the consumer side has given hope to third-party developers who once lacked confidence. Hongmeng must strike while the iron is hot and catch this "overwhelming wealth" in order to start the "developer-application-consumer" ecological cycle. Otherwise, once time allows the market to calm down, profit-seeking partners will hesitate and wait and see.

Part.2

Open or closed, it’s hard to choose

The counterattack story that Hongmeng wants to write is no different from Android's rise to the top back then.

Andy Rubin, the "Father of Android", initially developed Android to improve the operating system of digital cameras. Later, due to the downturn in the digital camera market, he turned to mobile phones, but it was still in financial difficulty and was acquired by Google.

Although it had the support of Google, Apple had already released its first mobile phone that amazed the world before Android 1.0 was released in 2008. The iOS system on it was as old as Windows and used the Unix kernel.

Under Steve Jobs's philosophy that operating systems and hardware devices must be vertically integrated, iOS provides third parties with the best development interfaces and tools, and relies on integrated products and services that do not require consideration of various compatibility issues, allowing consumers to willingly pay more, which in turn gives developers more profits, forming an ever-growing ecological cycle with strong barriers.

Android has been able to achieve great success outside of Apple's "independent kingdom" and now occupies nearly 80% of the global mobile operating system market. The main reason for its success is that it goes against the trend of iOS - a free and open source open ecosystem. Mobile phone manufacturers around the world can all add bricks and tiles to the underlying architecture of Android and show their talents.

On the same day that Android 1.0 was released, Google joined forces with more than 30 upstream and downstream giants such as Qualcomm, HTC, T-Mobile, and Motorola to form the global Open Mobile Alliance. In China, whether it is Lei Jun's Xiaomi or Luo Yonghao's Hammer, their entrepreneurial journey starting from mobile phone ROM can be said to be due to the openness of Android.

The path of interconnecting everything planned by Hongmeng in the early days is even less likely to be achieved by relying solely on a closed proprietary system. After having to port it to mobile phones, Huawei launched the "1+8+N" strategy, where 1 is the mobile phone entrance, 8 is Huawei's smart screen, tablet, speaker and other product lines, and N represents the IoT hardware ecosystem in which other hardware manufacturers participate, among which cars later became the top priority.

However, Android's openness is the reason for its success, and the global mobile phone manufacturers' "surrounding the city from the countryside" strategy that it has driven is the fruit of its success. Huawei's core products of Hongmeng system, whether mobile phones or cars, currently have absolutely no support from Xiaomi, Rong, OV, Wei, Xiaopeng, and Li-Li, and can only fight alone.

In order to cover the huge cost of self-developed chips and systems, Huawei's products are reflected in the consumer end, all of which are in the ranks of high brand premiums, competing head-on with Apple. The Mate60 series has regained a lot of market share, which has a lot to do with the poor performance of Apple's new iPhone15 series last year.

Unable to follow Android’s old path, Hongmeng’s only remaining way out is to be more like Apple “collecting taxes” in a closed ecosystem.

Part.3

The mobile phone industry has suffered from the "Apple tax" for a long time.

The application developers' repeated "anti-monopoly" struggles have only resulted in Apple charging a 30% commission on in-app digital content consumption for apps in the App Store with annual revenue of more than $1 million, and a 15% commission for small and medium-sized developers with annual revenue below $1 million.

This policy even applies to the reward function in public account articles. WeChat gives the reward amount to the author without taking a cent, but Apple has to pay a commission. In the end, under the pressure of the number of WeChat users, Apple agreed not to charge commissions for user consumption that the APP did not participate in, and the reward at the end of the public account article was renamed "Like the author".

This is one of the important means by which Huawei's Hongmeng ecosystem currently attracts third-party developers.

At this year's developer conference, WeChat and any Tencent products were not seen in the "friend circle" of the Hongmeng ecosystem announced by Huawei.

Sources said that Hongmeng and WeChat are indispensable to each other, and the current negotiations are still focused on getting a more favorable channel share ratio after Tencent joins. Tencent is so calculating, and the big companies behind other head applications will do the same. Concessions are essentially another form of cost. As early as 2021, Yu Chengdong publicly revealed that Huawei has invested more than 50 billion yuan in the research and development and promotion of Hongmeng.

In order to speed up the development of "pure-blooded Hongmeng", Huawei has continuously sent engineers to its top application partners to support development since the end of last year. However, even if only the top 5000 apps occupy 99% of mobile phone users' time, it only accounts for 0.2% of the total 2.6 million active apps in China.

Ultimately, developers seeking profit still have to follow the direction of mobile phone users voting with their feet. Huawei phones, let alone returning to their peak domestic market share of 45%, are optimistic about being able to keep pace with Apple and share the market with Android at a ratio of 2:2:6.

The Huawei Mate70 series at the end of this year will be the "golden pairing" of the latest generation of Kirin chips and HarmonyOS NEXT, and its performance cannot afford to fail. If the postponed haze comes true, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8Gen4 chip for Android will be available as early as October, and the Apple iPhone16 series will also be released in September as usual. It will be difficult for the Mate70 to gain the advantage of the Mate60, which was launched in August last year as a "pioneer plan".

The more daunting challenges are still overseas. The account systems of major social platforms and APP products of foreign mobile phone users are almost tied to the Google GMS service that Huawei has been banned from. Even if the Hongmeng system succeeds in China, how to face the real core of Android and Apple in markets around the world will be another story full of suspense.

The Chinese people's own mobile phone operating system, of course, cannot stop at being the mobile phone operating system used by the Chinese people. But where the pure-blooded road of Hongmeng leads to, it still needs one miracle after another to verify.