When US President Donald Trump announced that he would be imposing a trade ban on Huawei eight weeks ago, one of the Chinese tech giant’s biggest safety nets was HongMeng OS – a proprietary operating system that was said to be 60% faster than Android.
Now that the ban is more or less lifted, however, it looks like the company might have stretched the truth a little. In a recent interview with Huawei Chairman Liang Hua, he admitted that HongMeng actually isn’t a substitute for Android.
“The Hongmeng OS is primarily developed for IoT (Internet of Things) devices that will reduce latency. In terms of smartphones, we are still using the Android operating system and ecosystem as a “first choice,” he said.
“We haven’t decided yet if the Hongmeng OS can be developed as a smartphone operating system in the future.”
This isn’t an isolated incident, either — In another recent interview with French magazine Le Point, CEO Ren Zhengfei echoed Liang’s sentiments, saying that HongMeng was not designed for smartphones.
“We didn’t develop the OS to replace Google. And if Google does withdraw its OS from Huawei, we will need to start building an ecosystem because we don’t have a clear plan yet.” he said.
These two comments are a complete contradiction to Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu, who said back in May that the operating system would be ready for an international release by 2020.
With Huawei regaining access to Android this is all kind of a moot point, but it’s interesting to wonder what the company was planning if they didn’t.
Header Image Credit: Huawei
