In a small room a drone, a bipedal robot, a supermarket cashier and other devices present their vision China for an operating system of your own that will help you get rid of Windows and Android on PCs and cell phones in yet another aspect of the Cold War that is developing at all levels (political, economic, geostrategic, technological, spatial, etc.) and that has
erupted in recent years between China and the USA.
The room is located at the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center in Shenzhen. The innovation hub encourages Chinese officials, companies and researchers to develop software using OpenHarmony, an open-source version of the operating system that Huawei launched five years ago after U.S. sanctions ended Google’s support for Android for the company and its products.
China has acquired expertise in areas vital to Beijing’s vision of technological self-sufficiency, from operating systems to automotive software.
The battle
Chinese President Xi Jinping last year told the Communist Party’s elite Politburo that China must fight an uphill battle to localize operating systems and other technologies “as quickly as possible” as the US also blocks chip exports. advanced systems and other components on which the various operating systems currently used in computers and cell phones are based. As Reuters reports, OpenHarmony is being widely promoted in China as a “national operating system”
“This strategic move will likely erode the market share of Western operating systems such as Android and Windows in China as local products gain traction,” said Sunny Cheung, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a US defense policy think tank.
In the first quarter of 2024, Huawei’s HarmonyOS became the second-best-selling mobile operating system in China after Android, research firm Counterpoint said. It has yet to launch on smartphones outside China, but is expected to invade the country’s computers and replace Windows very soon.
Huawei no longer controls OpenHarmony, having donated the source code to a non-profit organization called the OpenAtom Foundation.
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