China Business Daily (reporter Jiao Likun) Hongmeng is coming! On the evening of June 2, it is an important moment for Huawei, and it will also be an important node for China's information and communication industry: HarmonyOS (Hongmeng Operating System, hereinafter referred to as Hongmeng) enters a new journey of scale push. For Huawei, this actual combat "breakthrough race" with no way back is bound to have a difficult road ahead, and the ecological construction of Hongmeng needs to race against time.
Screenshot of the video of the conference
Where is the uniqueness of Hongmeng, which opened large-scale commercial use
On the evening of June 2, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, announced the official release of HarmonyOS 2 for the market. This means that after several years of development and running-in, Hongmeng has entered a crucial stage of market practice, and there will be hundreds of devices to try.
Although the outside world has paid great attention to Hongmeng before, many people are still unclear about what Hongmeng is. According to reports, it is a kind of "all-you-can-eat" operating system for various smart devices, including mobile phones, which can be used in smart watches, smart speakers, smart sockets, smart desk lamps, and can also be used in car machines and computers. Yu Chengdong calls it the operating system with the widest support, and its emergence has broken the fragmentation between various devices. "With the blessing of Hongmeng, all devices will be more intelligent, and the experience brought to users can be brought to a new level." Yu Chengdong said.
Wang Chenglu, President of Huawei's Consumer Business Software Department, brings a lot of innovative gameplay. He said that Hongmeng can be simply understood as a unified control center, through which it can control all the devices connected to it, and can also arbitrarily form several devices into a new "hyperterminal" and call freely according to demand. He has always emphasized Hongmeng's innovation, convenience and efficiency, and gave many examples.
Wang Xi, china research manager at market research institute IDC, told the China Business Daily reporter that a "bottom demand" of consumers is always more convenient, so whether it is Hongmeng's main concept of "rapid linkage sharing, no need to download and learn Apps", or the new "folder logic" and "information cards" on the UI (desktop), they are trying to let consumers reduce the operation steps and levels of reaching core information. "In this regard, once consumers form a habit, they will be firmly grasped in the Hongmeng ecology." In its view, unlike before, Huawei has come up with a number of instance scenarios to introduce Hongmeng to consumers, these scenarios are common and use pain points, making it difficult not to look forward to the user experience brought by Hongmeng after opening up various devices.
What the appearance of Hongmeng means
At first, the industry believed that Hongmeng's goal was to fill the gap in the Android system, but at present, Hongmeng has greater ambitions, which is not aimed at the current mobile phone ecology, but the broader Internet of Everything ecology in the future.
At the Huawei Developer Conference held the previous year, Huawei Hongmeng version 1.0 debuted, when Yu Chengdong said that Hongmeng was originally developed for Internet of Things devices, but due to the US blockade, Huawei can no longer use Google's Android system, Hongmeng can only appear in advance, and was given more missions. Last year, Hongmeng upgraded to version 2.0, still for developers and ecosystem partners. At that time, Huawei promised to fully open up its core technology, software and hardware capabilities. Since April this year, Hongmeng has conducted two rounds of public beta on some Huawei models. Now, Hongmeng has begun to push to the consumer scale.
Zhang Yang, a senior analyst at Zhongcheng Think Tank, told the China Business Daily reporter that the official launch of the Hongmeng system first means that China has achieved an independent and controllable breakthrough in the field of mobile phones and even smart device operating systems, and since then, foreign countries have one less technology for China's "card neck". Second, it will bring a round of updates to the global mobile operating system space. Before the release of Hongmeng, Google released its new operating system Fuchsia OS, whose main features are the same as Hongmeng, which also includes various smart devices such as mobile phones and tablets, and also focuses on the Internet of Everything.
Ping An Securities said in the research report that the release of Hongmeng means that the "base" construction of Huawei's software ecological strategy in the era of Internet of Everything has been completed. The agency believes that Google's supply cut to Huawei is a major impact, but not fatal, mainly because the era of 5G Internet of Everything has come. The Internet of Everything is replacing the consumer Internet or mobile Internet as the main direction of the IT market, and Hongmeng is aiming at this field. The agency believes that Huawei is expected to rely on "Hongmeng" as a base in this new era and successfully build a software ecosystem.
Mobile phone manufacturers are cautious and wait and see
It is reported that Huawei will continue to push upgrades to Huawei's smart terminal devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and smart screens, and plans to upgrade nearly 100 devices to Hongmeng in the first half of next year. At the june 2 press conference, Huawei released the first batch of products equipped with Hongmeng, including Huawei's smart watches and tablets.
It is worth noting that many old models are also upgraded. Moreover, in order for consumers to have a good experience, Huawei also supports hardware upgrades such as batteries and memory. "Huawei recognizes that every user who has ever been is important to the future of Hongmeng." Fu Liang, a senior telecom industry analyst, said.
Some insiders said that at this stage, mobile phones are the core terminals of the intelligent ecosystem in which ordinary consumers are located, but because of US sanctions, Huawei is currently in a weak position in this link. Although Hongmeng can already support mobile phones, the current players are only Huawei itself, and other mobile phone manufacturers have not shown a positive attitude towards this. On May 31, Meizu publicly stated that its Lipro smart home products will be connected to Hongmeng, but its mobile phones and watches still use Android systems.
Zhang Yang said that other mobile phone manufacturers, especially the head manufacturers, will inevitably not take the lead in adopting Hongmeng, because the potential risks are huge. "Once a large factory adopts Hongmeng, it may face the risks of stopping the latest authorization of Android, restricting key components, etc., and many large manufacturers are building their own ecosystem, once hongmeng is adopted, the advantages of the ecological system they have built will disappear."
"Huawei + Honor have more than 300 million mobile phones in China, which is the 'cost' of Hongmeng's startup." Wang Xi believes that the needs of consumers, as well as more partners to join, these two factors can be combined into a positive feedback loop, once one of them forms a scale or takes a step first, the cycle can be turned, but the core problem at present is who will take the first step first.
Ecological construction is a race against time
For Huawei, opening the scale push means that the real market test has just begun. At the Huawei Hongmeng Partner Summit held in May this year, Yang Haisong, vice president of Huawei's consumer business AI and wisdom all-scenario business department, said that when an operating system is developed, the completion degree can only be regarded as 1%, and the remaining 99% of the progress can be completed, depending on how many industry partners are willing to adopt your platform.
From the perspective of historical development, many technology giants have "folded the sand" in the field of operating systems. Nokia's Symbian, Microsoft's Windows Phone, and Samsung's Tizen were all eliminated. Ping An Securities said in the research report that hongmeng ecological construction needs to race against time, and it is necessary to survive on a scale in the short term. It should be pointed out that unlike before, Huawei's role has undergone important changes, and it is no longer a participant in other systems, but a leader. "A good operating system is a prerequisite, but how to get partners to benefit from this system is the most important."
Hongmeng's ecosystem is expanding rapidly. It is reported that at present, more than 300 application and service partners, more than 1,000 hardware partners, and more than 500,000 developers have participated in the construction of the Hongmeng ecosystem. But for a whole new operating system ecosystem, this is not enough. Wang Chenglu said in an interview with the media in January this year: "We analyzed the ecological development of the computer industry and the mobile industry in the past two decades and found that 16% of the market share is a watershed, and more than 16% of the ecology is basically successful." "So this year my work goal is to make hongmeng ecology's market share reach 16%, and this hurdle must be crossed..."
Wang Xi also said that in order to achieve the most ideal experience, Huawei needs to pull more partners into the Hongmeng ecosystem. At the same time, content providers such as health and entertainment related to home appliances also need to be pulled into the Hongmeng ecology, when Huawei and Hongmeng will become a bridge connecting all aspects, and Huawei's "1+8+N" smart life strategy may be implemented to the extreme.
"We are in an era of internet of everything, no one is an island, we hope to prosper the Hongmeng ecosystem with more partners and developers." Yu Chengdong said at the end of the press conference, "No matter how much difficulty and how big the blow, our determination to provide consumers around the world with a better user experience and better products will not change." ”