Huawei Hongmeng OS 2 was officially released in the evening of June 2. It has been a long time since the launch of a new operating system in the field of smart terminals, the last time BlackBerry released BlackBerry 10 in 2013.

Over the past eight years, the smart terminal industry has undergone great changes, and the only thing that has not changed is the dominance of the iOS and Android operating systems.

As a digital enthusiast who has been obsessed with smart operating systems since the Symbian S60V3 era, and has used almost all niche operating systems in the next decade or so, and then watched them soar to the end of the product life cycle.

Atorasu, let's count a few operating systems that were born like Hongmeng.

How do they fail, and what are Hongmeng's characteristics that may avoid similar failures.

BlackBerry 10: I'm also compatible with Android APP, but why is the experience so bad? Hong Meng: AOSP (Android open source project) is a good thing, but I am not an Android shell.

I wonder what is the first reaction of most people when they mention BlackBerry today. Is it one of the retail stocks on Wall Street? The full keyboard mobile phone of the last era? Or simply do not know, or: "BlackBerry (fruit) is very expensive, not very delicious, not as good as mulberry." "

For the author, when it comes to BlackBerry, the first thing that comes to mind is the supernatural performance of BlackBerry after the "9 / 11" incident in the United States 20 years ago, when channel congestion was caused by too many people using mobile phones at the same time. Almost all communication tools are paralyzed, only BlackBerrys can be used properly because of their own encryption servers.

After that, the BlackBerry rose to fame, becoming the preferred mobile phone brand of the US government because of its security and stability, and later became the private phone of US President Barack Obama.

BlackBerry's "golden decade" began after 9 / 11, when Palm's Palm OS (Palm overtook Apple Inc and Newton to become the most popular PDA maker in the PDA era), Microsoft Corp's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian system dominated the smartphone market.

In the tripod market at that time, BlackBerry steadily occupied its own market segment because of its security and reliability, steadily increasing its share, and surpassed the declining Palm OS and Windows Mobile to become the second largest operating system after Symbian at the end of 2007.

In 2009, the year before the launch of Apple Inc iPhone 4, BlackBerry OS had a market share of more than 20%. At that time, Nokia Symbian, which had just launched its flagship N97, had more than 40% market share, and iOS had just begun to capture 16% of the market with the success of iPhone 3GS, while Android had a market share of only 3%.

Extremely prosperous and declining, in the following years, the launch of iPhone 4, the masterpiece of the iOS camp, completely sealed Apple Inc's mobile phone. At one point, the domestic price even reached more than 15000, and the emergence of the signal door could not stop it from becoming the benchmark of the mobile phone industry design.

On the other hand, Android has captured many mobile phone manufacturers who can't bear the high system license fee because of its open source features. Symbian was quickly abandoned, and BlackBerry had to run smaller Java-like software because of its outdated system, resulting in a lack of entertainment and slowly falling behind the pace of the times.

In this regard, BlackBerry is not completely without layout, in 2010, the acquisition of the QNX operating system, QNX, like iOS, is based on the Unix operating system, originally developed for computers, using a micro-kernel structure, better in computing speed and efficiency (QNX is still the on-board system of many cars today).

In 2013, BlackBerry officially released BlackBerry 10 based on the QNX kernel, along with BlackBerry Z10 and Q10, ushering in the all-touch era of BlackBerry, and in response to the ecological lack of niche applications, BlackBerry chose Android APP.

But because it is different from the Android kernel, BlackBerry 10 runs Android APP through an Android simulator, which is equivalent to the Windows virtual machine on macOS. At a time when the phone's computing power was already stretched, you can imagine how bad the experience was, and many APP simply couldn't run.

And BlackBerry's Android simulator is still in Android version 4.0, making many APP based on new Android versions unavailable, so like other niche systems, BlackBerry has lost to an endless cycle without software ecology-no user base.

Finally, after struggling for two years, BlackBerry announced that it would no longer launch BlackBerry 10 phones and instead outsourced the BlackBerry brand to TCL and launched Android BlackBerry phones, and the partnership ended in 2020, with BlackBerry logo phones on the stage.

Huawei Hongmeng offers the same solution to the problem of software ecology as BlackBerry 10, but uses a completely different implementation path. As mentioned above, BlackBerry uses its own QNX kernel and then runs Android APP in virtual machine mode, which eventually leads to a very poor user experience and has to quit the mobile phone business.

Hongmeng, on the other hand, is much smarter. Like Android, it is based on Linux development and is compatible with Alphabet Inc-CL C's AOSP (Android Open Source Project, Android open source project), so that Huawei phones with Android-based EMUI can be directly and seamlessly compatible with Android APP after upgrading Hongmeng 2.0.

After upgrading Hongmeng, many users feel almost no different from the previous EMUI in daily use, achieving seamless system switching, which is undoubtedly the best way without learning cost from the point of view of user experience.

However, it is precisely this advantage that has attracted numerous criticisms to Hongmeng, and the core of the question is whether Hongmeng is an Android shell.

To solve this problem, first of all, we have to make clear what Android casing means. If we use AOSP, it would be a bit too harsh, because AOSP does not belong to Alphabet Inc-CL C, it is an open source project, it belongs to all project contributors, and Android, although claimed to be open source, belongs entirely to Alphabet Inc-CL C.

Since the author has not found any authoritative definition of the system shell, here is a rough definition of the Android shell: a deeply customized interface based on Android development.

The most typical Android casings are XIAOMI's MIUI, Huawei's EMUI, Meizu's Flyme, OPPO's Color OS and so on, which can understand the different theme interfaces of Android.

From this point of view, there is no reason for Huawei, which already has EMUI, to develop an "Android skin". The biggest difference between Hongmeng and those shell UI lies in the control of the core level of the system, which is not available. They are also working for Alphabet Inc-CL C when they get customers, because they are essentially adding Android users.

While Huawei Hongmeng, which uses AOSP, can be seamlessly compatible with Android software ecology while mastering the core level of the system, why not? As for those who say that using AOSP is a shell, Li Nan, a former vice president of Meizu, gave the strongest response:

According to this logic, Android is also a Linux shell. Apple Inc's iOS and macOS also use FreeBSD (an important branch of the Unix operating system). Huawei is doing what Alphabet Inc-CL C and Apple Inc did at that time. Since this does not affect iOS to become a great self-research system, it does not affect Hongmeng to become a great self-research system. "

WebOS: I created card multitasking and multi-device interconnection, so why was it repeatedly sold cheaply? Hongmeng: born at an untimely time, after open source, 5G and the Internet of things are my main battlefields.

If you have heard of the BlackBerry operating system at all, webOS may be a completely unfamiliar word, but its position in the history of smartphone systems is irreplaceable.

Today's iOS, Android (including all Android shell UI) and Hongmeng OS's main interaction logic can be said to be a parody of webOS.

Back in 2009, when webOS was released, it pioneered the interactive logic of card multitasking and the bottom touch bar. By contrast, iPhone 3GS did not support multitasking other than music playback, Android was still in a chaotic era of 2.0, and the user experience was terrible.

WebOS's card multitasking and the bottom touch bar (left), does the interactive logic of iOS and Android seem familiar today? Image source: wirefresh, 9TO5

But in an era when people are still used to Nokia's physical keystrokes and the full touch of iOS and Android are rare, the interactive logic of webOS surpassing the times is also accompanied by an unusually steep learning curve.

For example, the author took webOS's mobile phone to his classmate and asked him to return to the desktop from the APP interface. It took the classmate a few minutes to find the right way to "slide up from the bottom of the screen to return to the desktop." this very intuitive and natural operation seemed to come from the future at that time.

WebOS is also the first operating system to open the line between phones and tablets. Huawei is proud to use the function of NFC to have a prototype on webOS-- you can use webOS's phone to touch webOS's tablet and open the web page you are browsing on the tablet.

In addition, webOS also created a notification center for wireless charging, aggregation of social applications, and a rudimentary control center.

WebOS, with so many advanced designs, attracted a small number of enthusiastic fans at the time, but its market performance was only a flash in the pan-- $1.3 billion was bought by Hewlett-Packard and sold cheaply to LG as a TV operating system soon after it was bought by HP because of poor market performance.

In addition to the lack of ecological application of the common cause of death of the minority system, it has also been defeated by the times, just like many philosophers and painters who surpassed the times and died early before they could be understood by the world.

The 3G network of webOS's era was not yet universal, and it was not until it was abandoned by Hewlett-Packard that LG announced that webOS was open source, giving developers more freedom to develop, but it was too late.

In addition to using AOSP compatible with Android ecology, Huawei Hongmeng also chose to be completely open source. According to news on June 6, Huawei donated all the basic functions of Hongmeng system to the Open Atomic Open Source Foundation as early as September last year, so that all manufacturers can have equal access to code and make their own products according to different needs.

In the current era, 5G has begun to popularize all over the world, and Hongmeng's feature of connecting everything can really develop its skills under the blessing of the high-speed network.

MeeGo: I opened the source code at the beginning of my birth, why am I still "dead"? Hongmeng: relying on Huawei and connecting to the world, a single spark can start a prairie fire.

If the open source of webOS is late, making it miss the best opportunity for development, then another niche system, MeeGo, opened the source code at the beginning of its release.

At this point, readers who are not familiar with digital technology may be thinking: how is another unheard of system!

You may not have heard of MeeGo, but you must know the names of Nokia and Intel Corp. Yes, MeeGo is the smart operating system developed by these two blue giants, but MeeGo has only one phone-Nokia's last-generation N-series flagship, the Nokia N9.

After that, under the operation of "Trojan horse" CEO Stephen Elop, Nokia desperately turned to Microsoft Corp, withdrew from the research and development of MeeGo, and bet all on the same newly born Windows Phone 7 (WP7) operating system, and the final result was obvious to all.

In the process of iterating from WP7 to WP8, Microsoft Corp chose to abandon the old users for various reasons, completely wiped out the application ecology and user base that he had finally accumulated, and finally had to withdraw from the fierce fight of the mobile operating system.

Review the statements made at the time of the release of MeeGo 1.0:

MeeGo is a free mobile operating system jointly announced by Nokia and Intel Corp that runs on a variety of electronic devices, including smartphones, laptops and televisions, and helps them integrate seamlessly. "

-- is there anything similar to Huawei Hongmeng's concept of the Internet of everything? in fact, BlackBerry (both car and mobile systems are developed based on QNX), webOS (using NFC technology to open the boundary between phones and tablets), or MeeGo (committed to seamless integration of a variety of electronic devices), all contain the idea of opening device boundaries, but there is no mature application scenario.

But compared with Huawei Hongmeng, they are both somewhat ill-timed and vainly trying to build their own software ecology-which may not have been impossible 10 years ago, but over the past decade, countless business practices have proved to be a dead end.

In addition, for MeeGo, it lost its biggest backer, Nokia, when it was born. By contrast, Hongmeng is the only Huawei company that has been able to "survive" years of sanctions against the world's most powerful superpower.

In the new products displayed at Hongmeng's press conference on June 2, Huawei has unveiled a very useful and imaginative strategy in front of consumers.

The mobile phone uses Huawei Share to connect seamlessly with eight smart devices, and the outside connects to countless smart home appliances through high-speed network-- a big picture of the future smart life application scene.

Behind Hongmeng is not only Huawei, but also Midea, Panasonic, Haier and Bosch. In the future, there may be more domestic mobile phone manufacturers to join, a single spark can start a prairie fire.

Conclusion

Direction is more important than effort.

Compared with the short-lived niche systems before, Huawei has undoubtedly found a strategic direction that is most likely to succeed.

But no matter how likely it is, it is only relative. while Huawei's publicity department is boiling with fans, it must also be aware of how difficult it is to build a new operating system.

Although Wang Chenglu, president of Huawei's consumer business software department, has repeatedly stressed that Hongmeng is not trying to replace Android, and it is not on the same track as Android and iOS.

However, whether it is the Internet of everything or Huawei's "1" strategy, mobile phones are the most important "1" and the most important window of the Internet of everything. so one of the keys to the success or failure of the new system is still its mobile market share and mobile-centric user experience.

It will take time to test whether Hongmeng OS can succeed, but Huawei has proved Huawei's highly calm strategic planning ability and unprecedented organizational ability by handing over Hongmeng OS, a counterattack plan that integrates Huawei's advantages in communications, mobile phones and chips, in the face of all-round sanctions from the United States.

Finally, I ended by quoting an analogy from Li Nan, a former vice president of Meizu.

Huawei is like a person in the face of the worst earthquake in a century, calmly hiding in the strongest corner when everyone else is rushing for the door. When the strongest shock wave is over, take out the suitcase and pack the most important things. Retreat to a hill in an open area to face a broader future. "