Huawei CEO denies report on HarmonyOS phone launch this year, possible by 2021

Huawei Consumer BG CEO, Richard Yu denies a report of HarmonyOS launch in smartphone by this year but he said it’s possible in 2021, reports Chinese media Sina Finance.

Last week, China’s Global Times reported that Huawei could launch the smartphone version of HarmonyOS as soon as the end of 2020 to take advantage of expanding the Chinese 5G network.

At Huawei Developer Conference 2019 (HDC 2019), the company officially launched the self-developed operating system, HarmonyOS AKA Hongmeng OS. Initially, it was introduced in smart TVs, while new platforms including PCs and Smart wearables could be added this year.

Earlier this month, Richard Yu said, Huawei will introduce HarmonyOS AKA Hongmeng OS to many platforms including smartphones in the future but did not give any specific details.

In May 2019, U.S. Entity List banned Huawei from accessing Google Mobile Services (GMS) for its smartphones. After that, the company launched Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) and shifted EMUI mobile skin to the open-source Android.

HDC 2020 will start on September 10, and the company will unveil a new HarmonyOS version alongside EMUI 11 based on Android 11. Therefore, the company is likely to continue using Android for its smartphones until it’s open source.

(Source)