We’ve recently reported that Huawei’s proprietary HongMeng OS is unlikely to be implemented in a smartphone in the near future – the news came as somewhat of a surprise since we thought Huawei were very close to introducing their Mate 30 with the OS soon.
But as it turns out, the first device to sport HongMeng OS is something quite different – during the launch of their 5G smartphone in China last week, the company also announced that we’ll be seeing their new OS in a smart TV.
Based on a report by BGR, Huawei CEO Richard Yu wants the new line of TVs to be called “Smart Screens” and it sounds something akin to an Android TV – except the first iterations will be very much tailored to the Chinese entertainment ecosystem – so not much in the form of Netflix, YouTube and all that jazz.
With the trade ban now seemingly lifted, Huawei can continue to utilize Android and all the services that comes with it – so we don’t see HongMeng really being introduced outside of China, since the Android ecosystem is crucial to consumers here; which means if Huawei’ Smart Screens were to come to Malaysia, we’d most likely see Android versions of them rather than HongMeng OS – which isn’t a bad thing at all.
With this, it makes us wonder if HongMeng OS will ever be widely used outside of China; the company did register two different names for the OS in Europe – Ark and Harmony – so that’s a small glimpse of its availability elsewhere, but we reckon both Huawei and consumers alike would rather have Android be the OS of choice in foreign lands.