Although outsiders had already heard and prepared for the launch of Huawei's new products on the evening of June 2, 2021, the official appearance of Hongmeng OS was enough to amaze the world.

Simply "pull" on the screen, you can connect any few smart devices into a "hyperterminal", and share all the content with each other as easily as opening local files. Huawei Hongmeng OS's new distributed architecture brings new possibilities for true cross-device collaboration.

Several new products at the press conference are also equipped with Hongmeng OS. The new version of Mate40 phone can achieve smooth multi-machine scheduling in video shooting; the tablet product MatePad Pro combines the second generation M-Pencil and matching keyboard to effortlessly transform into a major productivity tool; the new HUAWEI WATCH 3 can also interact with other Huawei devices to achieve seamless cooperation in addition to round-the-clock testing of multiple health indicators.

At the HarmonyOS Connect partner Summit just last month, Huawei announced a brand upgrade plan to comprehensively upgrade the platform "HUAWEI HiLink" and "Powered by HarmonyOS", which were previously connected to different brands of smart home devices, to "HarmonyOS Connect". This means that Hongmeng OS, which is originally intended to achieve cross-device integration, can touch a wider range of products.

In the dilemma that domestic intelligent manufacturing is generally facing the blockade of core technology, what kind of opportunity will Huawei bring to break the game when Huawei plays the software ecological card?

Although Hongmeng OS has only attracted public attention since 2019, its development can be traced back to the establishment of Huawei's "2012 Lab" in 2011.

It is said that the establishment of the laboratory stems from Ren Zhengfei's increased vigilance after watching the disaster movie 2012. He believes that the information explosion in the future society will be like a flood, and if Huawei wants to survive, it must build its own high-quality "Noah's Ark" to save itself at critical moments. The 2012 laboratory can be said to be a combination of cutting-edge technology and a strategy of preparing ahead of time, and from now on, it has extraordinary foresight.

The laboratory focuses on the research and development of new generation communications, cloud computing, data mining, machine learning and other fields. Hayes Semiconductor also belongs to the secondary department of the laboratory, and the embryonic form of Hongmeng OS was born in the terminal OS department in the laboratory.

The US Commerce Department has added Huawei to its entity list since May 2019 because of escalating trade frictions between China and the US, and tougher sanctions have since banned US companies from doing business with Huawei without government permission. At that time, Huawei's phones were mainly deeply customized EMUI based on Android, and once Alphabet Inc-CL C stopped providing Android support to Huawei under pressure from the US government, Huawei must have an alternative, or it may face a huge shock in the mobile phone business line.

Huawei executives responded on May 14 that they did have a backup system for Plan B.

Just 10 days later, the website of the Trademark Office of the State intellectual property Office showed Huawei's record of applying for the "Huawei Hongmeng" trademark. Over the next two weeks, Huawei applied for the registration of the "Hongmeng" trademark in many places around the world. The new system, with the meaning of "epoch-making" in its name, slowly began to build the foundation of a huge territory.

After two months of speculation with excitement and curiosity, the Huawei developer conference opened on August 9, and Hongmeng, a self-developed system, made its debut. Yu Chengdong said that if Android is no longer open to Huawei, Huawei "can use Hongmeng at any time." And, contrary to what most media previously thought, Hongmeng OS is not simply a mobile operating system, it seems to have a bigger idea behind it, but it was still hidden in the unknown at that time.

The next day, the first smart device with Hongmeng OS came out: the Honor Smart screen. But it did not let people catch a glimpse of the uniqueness, when the media reported that the product "has not really jumped out of the current smart TV category."

At the same time of the product release, Huawei also began to pay close attention to the ecological layout of the system. At the Huawei developer conference in September 2020, Yu Chengdong released Hongmeng OS version 2.0 and announced the official open source of Hongmeng OS. Developers have access to software development tools such as simulators, SDK packages, and IDE. Three months later, the Beta version of HarmonyOS 2.0, a mobile phone developer for research and development, launched a public trial recruitment and handed over the new system to the developers.

At the same time, Huawei launched the first Hongmeng OS developer Innovation Competition, which aims to promote the entry of talents and projects into Hongmeng OS and speed up the improvement of software ecology. Five months later, people will see that the competition attracted 3100 teams, about 25000 developers participated in the official tutorials, and more than 100000 developers participated in empowerment.

Perhaps feeling the time is ripe, in February 2021, Huawei announced that it would start the upgrade process of Hongmeng OS on several flagship phones starting from April 2021. In early March, Midea announced that its full range of smart home appliances had been fully integrated into Hongmeng OS and would be put on the market in large quantities in April, firing the first shot for Hongmeng OS to realize the layout of smart homes. When April came, Hongmeng OS, which has the function of "one core and multiple screens", was unveiled at the Shanghai Auto Show. The figure of Hongmeng OS began to appear everywhere.

Until yesterday, Hongmeng OS officially opened to entertain guests, followed by a new generation of flagship products with Hongmeng OS, which shows that Hongmeng OS and its products have reached full maturity and began to embrace consumers. At present, Hongmeng OS has more than 300 application service partners, more than 1000 hardware partners and more than 500000 developers.

In terms of both hardware and software, the ecology of Hongmeng OS is being constructed rapidly. The maturity and prosperity of the ecological chain is only a matter of time.

Affected by US sanctions, Huawei has experienced a shortage of mobile phone chips, directly affecting mobile phone production. According to IDC, Huawei's global mobile phone shipments plunged 21.5% in 2020 compared with the same period last year, and its market share fell nearly 3 points. Huawei's market share fell directly out of the top five in the world in the first quarter of 2021, and the damage has really hit Huawei.

The hardware is stuck, the mobile phone business is under pressure, and Huawei's layout of Hongmeng's OS may be prescient. Because the business development at the software level is to complement Huawei's own ecology, and it is not only limited to its own products, but also can maximize the expansion of services to as many third-party areas as possible. Once the time is ripe and the problem of hardware production capacity is solved, it can be absorbed into this ecology immediately.

After Huawei joined forces with Polar Fox Motors and launched the pure electric car Alpha S, the public opinion of Huawei's entry into the automobile industry was boiling for a moment, and the shares of several car companies that Huawei partnered with also rose to pay tribute. But after that, Huawei executives repeatedly stressed on a number of occasions that Huawei "does not build cars" and "does not participate in any car companies", which puzzles the outside world.

Huawei does not contradict itself.

The mobile phone business is not only stuck, but also a Red Sea market where growth slows and innovation slows. The system has been completely occupied by Android and Apple Inc. Even if Huawei makes a mobile phone system, it is barely a success.

But the system and ecology can not be kept.

Only when we find a new blue ocean market to launch an attack, can our system grow rapidly and iteratively grasp the new pain points of users. The fast-growing smart car market is Hongmeng's best point of attack.

By adding Hongmeng OS to the car, Huawei is not giving the world another on-board operating system, but allowing the car to grow brains and senses that can interact with mobile phones to better cooperate and achieve more functions in the future. In addition, Huawei's self-developed key automotive components, such as lidar, which can play an important role in self-driving, together with Hongmeng OS and the self-driving function that will be realized in the future, can bring more extreme functions and experience to the product.

At this time, what Huawei has to do is to make a wide range of allies, rather than posing as if it wants to build its own car and grab the cake of the industry. Instead, it wants to show that even a little-known car company like Xiaokang can make a difference with the help of Huawei's system.

This logic will extend from cars to soymilk machines, Huawei will show hardware manufacturers how to teach you how to be intelligent, and eventually pull up a team of their own.

Fortunately, China has the largest hardware team in the world to unite.

Domestic substitution has always been a poignant topic. From the decision made by the national capitalists a hundred years ago to let domestic goods enter thousands of households, to now the advanced manufacturing industry seeks domestic breakthroughs, this road has never been easy.

The operating system, which has the soul status in the modern electronic industry system, has also ushered in several Chinese figures. But unfortunately, in the end, they all walked out of the historical spotlight because of a variety of limitations of the times.

In 1998, the discussion on the security of Microsoft Corp's back door exploded in the international community. The subsequent antitrust investigation against Microsoft Corp also pushed the topic of seeking alternatives to Microsoft Corp to the forefront of the storm.

Prior to this, the previous generation of domestic practitioners who have engaged in operating system research and development have suffered from the loss of completely self-research and lagging behind in hardware development. It is difficult to start another stove, and it seems to be a feasible way to make independent and controllable modifications based on existing materials. The global open source Linux system has become the first choice, and for a while, domestic Linux systems have come out one after another, including both the "blue dot" of folk geek cooperation and the "red flag" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In 2001, "Red Flag Linux" once won the first place in the bidding for procurement by the Beijing Municipal Government, with a tendency to set sail against the wind. However, later users could not stand Microsoft Corp's courteous visit and active joint venture, and their attitude gradually tilted towards Microsoft Corp. Because of the lack of good application ecological support, users also complain a lot about domestic Linux. Even if the superior issued a mandatory inspection index, it is also unable to retain users for the domestic system. In the end, several well-known Linux developers in China are either on the verge of bankruptcy or struggling to survive on meagre government orders.

After that, other domestic developers took the detour of pirated systems. After years of winning and losing games, Microsoft Corp finally succeeded in overthrowing piracy and established the dominant position in the domestic market. Even if domestic users experienced "black screen humiliation", there was nothing they could do in the end.

After the first generation of iPhone triggered the industry revolution, the wave of mobile Internet came, and the major manufacturers rushed to the smartphone operating system track. The OMS system released by China Mobile Limited in 2008 caught up with the window of the times, and it was possible to attack the city and expand the territory.

However, one of the most difficult problems for operators to overcome in developing an operating system is that they can't help but plant their own business in the system and want to eat all the "fat water". On the one hand, this scares away developers, and no one dares to compete with the boss for business, on the other hand, it means a bad user experience. After many consumers get the original system phone, the first thing they do is to swipe the phone.

Later, the Wo Phone system developed by China Unicom could not escape a similar fate. And with the launch of Phone in 2010, Android has come out of its initial astringent period and is in its heyday, when the weak carrier system has challenged Android and has missed the window.

However, timing is not the only winning factor. BABA YunOS, who was born in an Internet giant, started in 2010. This system chooses to be independent of Android development, and its experience and stability are much better than those of previous carrier systems. it has attracted mobile phone manufacturers who are willing to cooperate and will be able to take off on the wind.

It was Android itself that dealt a fatal blow to the domestic system this time. At the beginning of iPhone, Android formed an Open handheld Consortium (Open Handset Alliance, or OHA) of 84 hardware manufacturers. The manufacturer who is going to cooperate with BABA is unfortunately one of the members of this alliance.

Alphabet Inc-CL C believes that YunOS can draw lessons from Android, but it is not compatible with Android ecology. if the manufacturers in the alliance cooperate with the system, they will violate the alliance rules and will no longer be licensed by Android. Although BABA vehemently denied it, the partner was pressured to cancel the cooperation a few hours before the product launch.

YunOS eventually withdrew from the mobile operating system market.

To sum up, every failure of the domestic system before can be attributed to several reasons.

First of all, the lack of cooperation between the system and applications: the development of the operating system is actually a long-term process, in addition to the need to gather a large number of development forces, the support of sufficient application software vendors is also very important. If we cannot unite as one and challenge the industry giants together, the result of fighting on our own can only be broken one by one.

Secondly, the cooperation between software and hardware is not enough: China has a late-development disadvantage in independent hardware manufacturing, but the operating system is a systematic project in which software and hardware promote each other. In front of the previous operating system, there is no good solution to this problem. With the continuous improvement of the hardware supply chain, Chinese mobile phones have gradually taken advantage of the customized system.

Finally, it is difficult to grasp the time window: when the precious window period is over, it is already very difficult to catch up with the giants and break the mature format. The ultimate solution is to look to the future and lay out in advance before the arrival of the next era, will it be possible for the Jedi to fight back.

At the end of last month, an internal memo from Huawei showed that due to external constraints, Ren Zhengfei thought it would be difficult for Huawei to produce advanced hardware in the short term and that the software sector had "greater independence and autonomy." he called on the company's team to focus on building a software ecosystem, such as the Hongmeng operating system, full-scene AI computing framework Mindspore and other IT products.

There is no doubt that the Internet of things bet by Hongmeng OS is the general trend of the development of the next generation Internet technology. Unlike all its predecessors, Huawei has a rare opportunity to make a fundamental breakthrough and end China's history of lack of underlying operating systems with its advanced layout.

Hongmeng OS's huge cross-device coordination and compatibility capabilities have left a smooth interface for countless smart devices in the future. In this coming new wave of digital revolution, we will be fortunate to see China playing a powerful role in changing the human way of life.

This will not only bring the pride of China's own operating system, but also bring respect for mankind after exploring more possibilities.