Huawei stated in a recent interview that it plans to extend its in-house Huawei OS (HongMeng / Harmony OS) to more product categories and to overseas markets in 2020. Smartphones are excluded in the list, as Android remained as a preferred option for the vendor in the short run.

This echoes with our latest forecast on Huawei OS in smartphone domain. The unproven user experience, the potential IP risks, and lack of sufficient app ecosystem are main challenges for the new operating system if applied on smartphone. We view the likelihood that the vendor will extend HongMeng OS to smartphone remains low in the following two years. We are relatively more optimistic on the new OS in China, thanks to government endorsement, Huawei’s leading position, as well as unique local Android forks ecosystem. But we remain bearish on Huawei OS in overseas markets.

Our latest report Global Smartphone Sales Forecast by Operating System for 88 Countries: 2007 to 2024 was published. The report forecasts global smartphone sales, by 15 operating systems, for 88 countries worldwide, from 2007 to 2024. WSS clients could access the full report via this link.