Over the past few months, Huawei has been filing trademarks across the world to secure the name of its in-house operating system, dubbed “HongMeng” OS.Chinese tech giant Huawei has filed a trademark application for the word “Harmony”, as it could be the international name of its proprietary operating system. The trademark was filed at the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) on July 12.
Over the past few months, the company has been filing trademarks across the world to secure the name of its in-house operating system, dubbed “HongMeng” OS. Previously, the world’s second-largest smartphone maker has also filed for a trademark for HongMeng OS name in Europe and nine other countries. In addition, it also filed a trademark application for “Huawei ARK OS” at the German Patent & Trademark Office (DPMA).
Clearly, Huawei is serious about its ambitions to launch its own proprietary OS to rival Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS in the coming months — two of the most dominant mobile operating systems on the market today. It is being said that HongMeng is likely the name Huawei would use for Chinese smartphones, while Harmony could be the global name for the operating system.
While not much is known about Huawei’s Android rival, but we do know that the company is actively developing an operating system of its own. In a recent interview with Le Point in France, Ren Zhengfei – Huawei CEO and founder – revealed a few details about the brand new OS that has been in making for quite some time. Zhengfei said that HongMeng OS is more than a replacement for Android and isn’t going to be limited to smartphones. The company plans to use the OS to power a lot of devices including routers, switches, and even smart cars.
Also read: Huawei’s Android rival could fail without popular apps, developer support
Zhengfei further claimed that HongMeng has a processing delay of fewer than 5 milliseconds and is going to be faster than Android or even macOS. He, however, admitted that it isn’t going to be easy to create an ecosystem, just like Google did with Android. Knowing the challenges in competing with Android, Huawei is holding a two-day developer summit in China in the month of August that will be used to convince developers to create apps for HongMeng.
In May, the US Commerce Department banned sales of American-made software and hardware to Huawei without obtaining its permission. US officials have accused Huawei of being too close to the Chinese government and a threat to national security. Last month, US President Donald Trump at the G20 summit had allowed American corporations to once again resume business with Huawei. At the moment, Huawei remains on US blacklist as a potential security threat, despite Trump’s reassurance.
