Huawei’s highly anticipated operating system has officially been launched today at the Huawei Developer Conference. Huawei decided to go with HarmonyOS as the name for the new, open-source platform.
“HarmonyOS is the first microkernel-based distributed OS for all scenarios,” consumer group CEO Richard Yu told attendees at the Huawei Developer Conference.
The new platform supports smartphones, smart speakers, computers, smartwatches, wireless earbuds, cars, and tablets. Yu said the platform supports RAM sizes from kilobytes to gigabytes. However, it won’t support root access.
The platform will eventually support a range of apps, specifically noting that HTML5, Linux, and, crucially, Android apps will be compatible.
“They will all be able to run on our OS in the future,” Yu says. Yu added that the ARK Compiler used in HarmonyOS app development will also support Kotlin, Java, Javascript, C, and C++.
“HarmonyOS 1.0 will be first adopted in its smart screen products, which are due to launch later this year. Over the next three years, HarmonyOS will be optimized and gradually adopted across a broader range of smart devices, including wearables, Huawei Vision, and head units for your car,” Huawei said in a statement.
