Huawei Technologies has unveiled the latest version of its home-grown mobile operating system HarmonyOS for developers, as the US-sanctioned telecommunications equipment giant takes on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS in the Chinese market, reports the South China Morning Post. The developer preview version of HarmonyOS Next was made available to coders on Thursday, and the operating system will be launched for commercial use in the fourth quarter of this year, Huawei said at its developer conference.
HarmonyOS Next, billed as a major upgrade to Huawei’s mobile platform, will no longer support Android-based applications.
Over 200 industry partners have initiated the development of native HarmonyOS apps, and the company aims to get 5,000 partners on board by the end of 2024, Zhu Yonggang, president of Huawei Consumer Business Cloud Services, said at the Thursday event.