Prey becomes hunter: Huawei, under US sanctions, is eyeing Microsoft's Windows

[Gearbest]During this period of time, Huawei fans may be more excited than during the Chinese New Year. First of all, on August 29, Huawei Mate60 Pro suddenly went on sale, and a wave of “blitzkrieg” confused everyone. Regarding this phone, Huawei has released less information, so many people initially suspected that it was still a Snapdragon platform. However, after disassembling the phone, it turned out to be a Kirin chip that had not been seen for a long time, which immediately made people excited. . Then the entire Internet went crazy, pushing the sales of this mobile phone to about 800,000 units within a week, and countless netizens rushed to buy it. During this period, Huawei officials just issued a few notices and promotional videos as a matter of routine. The publicity department probably completed this year's KPIs without any effort, which was a huge win.

Huawei Mate60 Pro

Huawei's hardware wins, but its software doesn't fall behind either. Wang Chenglu, CEO of Shenzhen Kaihong Digital Industry Development Co., Ltd. in China, revealed that HarmonyOS for Huawei mobile phones will be launched on the PC platform, and we will see Harmony PC on the market next year. Wang Chenglu, who revealed the information, has a great background. He once served as the president of Huawei’s Consumer BG Software Engineering Department, and also served as the director of Huawei’s AI and All-Scenario Intelligence Business Department. He is an important participant in Huawei’s software development work and is also Huawei’s The founder of Hongmeng OS and EMUI. Therefore, the news about the PC version of Hongmeng OS is very credible.

A Hong Kong blogger commented on the PC version of Hongmeng that after three years of all-round suppression by the United States, Huawei has relied on its key chip breakthroughs to revive its high-end smartphone business. At the same time, the Chinese tech giant has another target in mind, and that is U.S. dominance of operating systems, especially in desktops and laptops, where Huawei has targeted Microsoft. Huawei has changed from the prey of the United States to the hunter.

A prey's reversal

Huawei can be said to be one of the most powerful technology companies in China. It has excellent technology and strong strength in various fields such as communication equipment, smartphones, tablets, and electric vehicles. However, perhaps because of “showing off the trees”, this technology company was noticed by the United States many years ago. Huawei has been severely hit by U.S. sanctions.

In 2019, on the eve of the full implementation of U.S. sanctions, Huawei shipped more than 240 million mobile phones that year, making it the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world and the largest smartphone manufacturer in China, with shipments higher than Apple. However, under the double blow of the epidemic and sanctions, Huawei's mobile phone shipments will only be 30 million units in 2022, less than a fraction of its own year. Moreover, in terms of the company's total revenue, Huawei has also dropped from more than 850 billion yuan in 2019 to more than 640 billion yuan in 2022. There is no doubt that under the U.S. technology blockade, all Huawei can do is survive.

Source: “Global Daily”

But now, the situation has reversed. The release of Huawei Mate60 Pro announced that Huawei has broken through the technological blockade established by the United States. It has also been called a “fighting machine” by countless people. Some overseas bloggers called it a “BIG SLAP” (big slap), thinking that this phone's The advent announced that US sanctions were beginning to fail. Of course, it is not enough for sanctions to fail. Huawei, the “prey” of the United States, has transformed into a “hunter” under the heavy pressure of the past three years. The emergence of the PC version of Hongmeng OS means that it has begun to eye Microsoft's Windows…

The third largest operating system

In the past, U.S. sanctions kicked Huawei out of the Android ecosystem, and Huawei phones that were unable to use Google’s family of products struggled in overseas markets. Huawei briefly became the number one player in the global smartphone market, but eventually lost almost all of its market share, leaving only the Chinese market. Now, Hongmeng OS has completely replaced Android in Huawei mobile phones. Thanks to Huawei's huge user base, Hongmeng OS has become the third largest mobile operating system in the world, with hundreds of millions of users.

But Huawei is obviously not satisfied with this. The mobile operating system must develop, and the desktop operating system must also develop, so that it can be called sound. The launch of Hongmeng OS on the PC platform undoubtedly demonstrates Huawei's confidence in vigorously developing PC-side operating systems. The PC version of Hongmeng OS will undoubtedly be one of the focuses of Huawei's consumer business development in the future. The “Internet of Everything” vision that Huawei once proposed is now gradually becoming more complete.

Currently, there are three main operating systems on the PC side, namely Microsoft's Windows, Apple's MacOS and Linux. Among them, among the general user group, Microsoft's Windows undoubtedly occupies a dominant position. Android will be included、Counting all operating systems such as iOS, macOS, Windows, ChromeOS, etc., Microsoft Windows’ share is as high as 29.29%, making it the world’s second largest operating system after Android, while desktop macOS’s share is only 7%.

However, even though Windows' share is astonishing, Huawei is not completely without advantages over Microsoft. One of the reasons why Hongmeng OS has quickly become the world's third largest operating system on the mobile side is the huge stock of Huawei mobile phones on the market. On the PC side, Huawei has grown into the top three laptop manufacturers in the Chinese market, second only to Lenovo and HP. In comparison, Microsoft's Surface sales are very small. Therefore, if Huawei can update Hongmeng OS for the huge number of Huawei computers in the society, then Hongmeng OS may quickly become the third largest operating system on the desktop.

The spark of change has been ignited

According to Wang Chenglu, the PC version of Hongmeng OS will officially arrive next year. From this point of view, it will still take time for the system to come out.

It should be noted that, unlike the Huawei Mate60 Pro that went on sale not long ago, the PC version of Hongmeng OS may not be so “shocking”. First of all, Hongmeng OS itself has a high degree of awareness in China, and the public is not unfamiliar with Hongmeng OS. Secondly, although the user base of PC devices is huge, it is obviously not as powerful as mobile devices. Finally, before the advent of Hongmeng OS on the PC side, today's Huawei PC devices already have many features of Hongmeng OS, such as super relay station, multi-screen collaboration, etc. Therefore, Hongmeng OS on PC may not bring much change in experience.

At present, engineers from Hongmeng ecological company Honghu Wanlian have completed the preliminary adaptation of OpenHarmony to PCs (x86), which is based on the OpenHarmony 3.2 Beta3 version and a certain model of HP office notebooks. Hongmeng OS is a full-scenario distributed OS based on microkernel. Huawei's goal is to achieve a seamless collaborative experience across terminals through Hongmeng OS. Therefore, the launch of the PC version of Hongmeng OS may not be “amazing” enough, just like a falling spark. But as long as the conditions are sufficient, sooner or later it will develop into a prairie fire.

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