Huawei: Android will not be replaced by its own Hongmeng OS for the time being

Huawei does not plan to replace Android as an operating system for mobile phones for the time being. The company is responding to rumors that it would release its own operating system called Hongmeng as an alternative mobile OS.

Catherine Chen, a high-ranking vice president at the Chinese manufacturer, reacted to the rumors to China’s Xinhua news agency. Earlier this month, the company appeared to have registered the Hongmeng OS brand name, and from that application it seemed, according to many media, that it would be the intended successor to Android. Previously, there were already names such as Ark OS as an alternative to Google’s operating system.

Huawei will continue to use Android for the time being, Chen says. According to her, Hongmeng OS is an industrial equipment operating system. She goes on to say that the OS has been in development for much longer, even before discussions started about Android alternatives. According to Chen, Hongmeng cannot simply be converted to an operating system for telephones. “They consist of millions of lines of code, but Hongmeng only has a few hundred thousand and is therefore much more secure. It also has extremely low latency compared to smartphone operating systems,” she tells Xinhua.

Huawei became part of a trade ban imposed by the US government in May. Companies were no longer allowed to trade with the Chinese manufacturer. That also included Google, and that would cause problems for the use of Android on the phones. Since then, there have been many rumors about how the company may want to get rid of Android, but it is still far from certain how exactly that should go. The trade ban has since been partially suspended.