Several reports have indicated that Huawei has been internally working on its own homegrown Hongmeng OS, the company’s alternative operating system. Hongmeng may or may not be able to replace Android, could be close to being unveiled officially. The report comes from China’s state-run Global Times and several publications are taking this news with some doubt, but contains a few key details that should be possible to verify soon enough.
Huawei is set to Hongmeng OS at its developer conference, which kicks off this week on Friday August 9th in Dongguan, China. Huawei executives have said that the software is primarily designed for IoT devices, though it will first come to Honor smart TVs.
Huawei’s Hongmeng OS has been largely compared to Google’s long-in-the-works Fuchsia, which is similarly an experimental operating system that is designed to run on various form factors. Hongmeng OS is also said to be built around a microkernel so it can “better accommodate artificial intelligence and can run on multiple platforms.”
That said, the Global Times also claims that a Hongmeng OS smartphone is very much in the works and already in the process of being tested. The first device could debut alongside Huawei’s Mate 30 Pro flagship later in the year which we highly doubt as Huawei cannot risk a flahship phone with such a young immature OS. If released with the Mate 30 Pro, it will be released in the fourth quarter.
