Reports surrounding an in-house operating system being developed by Huawei date back as far as 2012. They intensified in May 2019 after Huawei was subjected to export restrictions by the United States government for violations of United States sanctions against Iran. Huawei executive Richard Yu described an in-house platform as a "plan B" in case it is prevented from using Android on future smartphone products. Prior to its unveiling, it was originally speculated to be a mobile operating system that could replace Android on future Huawei devices, but by July 2019, some Huawei executives were describing Harmony as being an "industrial" embedded operating system designed for IoT hardware, discarding the previous statements for it to be a mobile operating system. These details were confirmed upon the official unveiling of the platform in 2019, with Huawei listing use cases such as smart TVs, in-car entertainment, and wearable devices. Some media outlets reported that this OS, referred to as "Hongmeng OS", could be released in China in either August or September 2019, with a worldwide release in the second quarter of 2020. On 24 May 2019, Huawei registered "Hongmeng OS" as a trademark in China. The same day, Huawei registered trademarks surrounding "Ark OS" and variants with the European Union Intellectual Property Office. In July 2019, it was reported that Huawei had also registered trademarks surrounding the word "Harmony" for desktop and mobile operating system software, indicating either a different name or a component of the OS. The name "Hongmeng" came from Chinese mythology that symbolizes primordial chaos or the world before creation. In June 2019, Huawei communications VP Andrew Williamson told Reuters that the company was testing HongMeng in China, and that it could be ready "in months". However, in July 2019, chairman Liang Hua and senior vice presidentCatherine Chen stated that Hongmeng OS was not actually intended as a mobile operating system for smartphones, and was actually an embedded operating system designed for Internet of things hardware. In July 2019, Huawei chairman Liang Hua stated that the OS was intended for "industrial" use and that Huawei " decided yet if the Hongmeng OS can be developed as a smartphone operating system in the future". Building upon the statement, Huawei's senior vice president Catherine Chen stated that it was an embedded operating system designed for Internet of things hardware. On 9 August 2019, Huawei officially unveiled Harmony OS at its inaugural developers' conference in Dongguan. Huawei described Harmony as a free, microkernel-based distributed operating system for various types of hardware, with faster inter-process communication than QNX or Google's "Fuchsia"microkernel, and real-time resource allocation. The ARK compiler can be used to port Android APK packages to the OS. Huawei stated that developers would be able to "flexibly" deploy Harmony OS software across various device categories; the company focused primarily on IoT devices, including "smart displays", wearable devices, and in-car entertainment systems, and did not explicitly position Harmony OS as a mobile OS. On April 22, 2020, Ren Zhengfei, the CEO of Huawei said: Huawei's operating system may take a long time to surpass Android and iOS, but it will not exceed 300 years.
Devices
Huawei stated that Harmony OS would initially be used on devices targeting the Chinese market. The company's subsidiary brand, Honor, unveiled the Honor Vision line of smart TVs as the first consumer electronics devices to run Harmony OS. Now, few devices are supported by Harmony OS, they are: Honor Vision, Honor Vision Pro, Huawei Vision, Huawei Router AX3. In May of 2020, it was reported that Huawei intends to use the multi-platform operating system in personal computers as HarmonyOS 2.0 according to the Weibo account of a well known technology industry insider.
