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our reporter qin xiao reported from beijing

on september 30, "people's daily" released a video inventory of national innovation and technology breakthroughs, mentioning chang'e-6, quantum computing, and china's fully self-developed operating system harmonyos next (also known as "pure-blooded harmony" ). the video stated that as a fully self-developed system in china, the pure-blood hongmeng "is opening up new horizons with an attitude of continuous improvement." previously, at huawei’s autumn full-scenario new product launch conference, huawei had announced that “pure-blood hongmeng” would officially launch public testing on october 8.

in addition, a reporter from china business news noticed that at the hongmeng qianfan battle swearing-in meeting held recently, including baidu, bilibili, dingtalk, jd.com, kuaishou, meituan, alipay, tencent, netease, wechat major internet companies, including bo, were all present to support hongmeng. yu chengdong, managing director of huawei and chairman of terminal bg, said: "native hongmeng is a new life and is working hard to grow. hongmeng is not only made, but also used. in the next few months, huawei will work with partners and developers to let’s work hard to make native hongmeng officially commercialized.”

implement full-stack self-research from the inside out

from the internal project establishment in 2015, to the official launch of hongmeng operating system in 2019, and now accelerating towards full commercial use, in yu chengdong's words: "it took hongmeng 10 years to complete the 30-year journey of its peers."

as the base of digital infrastructure, the operating system releases hardware capabilities and enables software applications to run efficiently. it plays a key role in linking software and hardware collaboration. in the past few decades, the global operating system market has been basically monopolized by google's android, microsoft's windows, apple's ios and macos, and linux systems, so that domestic companies have to survive under the rules established by others.

however, facing the era of all-scenario intelligence of the internet of everything, new experiences and ecological creation are needed. to create such an ecosystem, a more powerful operating system is needed. on august 9, 2019, huawei officially launched the hongmeng operating system based on microkernel and distributed in all scenarios.

since its debut in 2019, hongmeng system has gone through 4 major iterations. on january 18, 2024, huawei announced the launch of harmonyos next, which is no longer compatible with android. because its system base is fully self-developed and only supports hongmeng kernel and hongmeng system applications, it is no longer compatible with android applications. it is also called "pure-blooded hongmeng" in the industry and outside. saying goodbye to the linux kernel means the end of the 30-year history of terminal operating system kernels being dominated by the west.

according to reports, hongmeng has achieved full-stack self-research from the operating system kernel, file system, to programming language, compiler/runtime, programming framework, to design system, integrated development environment, as well as ai framework and large models. it shows high flexibility and scalability, and its performance is improved by more than 10% compared with linux. harmony intelligence, the native intelligence of hongmeng, builds xiaoyi intelligent agent based on the pangu large model through device-cloud collaboration, deeply empowers the operating system with ai, and opens up ai capabilities to empower third-party applications.

hongmeng system has grown from a spark to become china's second largest operating system. according to the latest data released by research organization counterpoint research, hongmeng system's market share in china has increased from 8% in the first quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024. 17%, ios share dropped from 20% to 16%. it officially surpassed apple's ios and became the second largest operating system in china.

hongmeng is not huawei’s “one-man show”

the key to the success of an operating system lies in the ecosystem, which requires the establishment of a complete symbiotic ecosystem of software developers, chip companies, terminal companies, operators and other entities in the industry chain. "only when hongmeng has its own ecosystem can it be a true mobile operating system. it can also coordinate applications, operating systems, and chips to continuously improve experience and security." said xu zhijun, vice chairman and rotating chairman of huawei.

in fact, since huawei announced the full launch of hongmeng native applications, companies and developers in many fields have successively joined the hongmeng ecosystem.

zhu yonggang, president of huawei terminal cloud, introduced at the "huawei full connectivity conference 2024" that more than 10,000 applications and meta-services, which account for 99.9% of consumers' usage time, have been put on the native hongmeng application market, covering automobiles, education, travel accommodation, and financial management. , business office, shopping price comparison, convenient life, social communication, travel navigation, news reading, audio and video entertainment, practical tools, games and other 18 vertical fields.

at the hongmeng qianfan battle oath-taking ceremony, cao peng, chairman of jd group’s technical committee and president of jd cloud division, revealed that jd group’s major apps, including retail, logistics, finance, health and internal oa, have fully adapted to native hongmeng. the experience and fluency have reached a very complete level, and some experiences have even surpassed the original android version. weibo coo and sina mobile ceo wang wei also said: "i believe that with the continuous iterative upgrades of harmonyos next, it will become another smart terminal operating system leading the global development after ios and android."

it is reported that huawei insists on investing more than 6 billion yuan every year to support and encourage hongmeng developers to innovate. currently, the number of registered developers in the huawei developer alliance has grown to 6.75 million, an increase of more than 10 times in five years. at the same time, 305 colleges and universities have launched hongmeng courses, and 38 professional talent training institutions have participated in hongmeng talent training.

hongmeng ecosystem is not huawei’s “one-man show” and needs to be built together with partners from thousands of industries. after decades of development in china's internet, the traffic dividend has peaked, and the giant pattern has been finalized. at the same time, with the help of its monopolistic traffic advantages, it has built a "walled garden" to resist and restrict competition and maximize its own business interests. ordinary developers not only have to face the established rules of ios and android, but also deal with many restrictions from internet giants. the living conditions of developers are not optimistic.

especially now, the all-scenario era of intelligent connectivity of everything is accelerating, and an operating system with a solid foundation and a prosperous ecosystem has become the need of the times. the development of hongmeng ecosystem has broken the world-divided pattern between android and ios, firmly established itself as the third pole, broken the pattern of overseas monopoly on global operating system root technology, and allowed china's information technology industry to have its own roots.

(editor: zhang jingchao review: li zhenghao proofreader: zhai jun)