Huawei unveils self-developed OS for digital infrastructure

Huawei Technologies Co has officially launched self-developed openEuler operating system, as part of its broader push to solve China's problem of lacking homegrown operating systems for fundamental digital technologies. 

The openEuler is designed for enterprise customers, and it can be used in devices such as servers, cloud computing and edge computing. 

Huawei said openEuler realized core technology sharing with HarmonyOS, another self-developed OS by the company, for the internet of things equipment including smartphones, personal computers and smart watches. 

Xu Zhijun, rotating chairman of Huawei, said the two operating systems can cover various scenarios to solve the problem of shortage of indigenous, mainstream fundamental operating systems in China.

The two systems will be both open source, so that more industrial partners can participate in the efforts to build a full-scenario covered ecosystem, Xu said. 

In addition to offering consumers electronics such as smartphones, Huawei also provides enterprise customers products and solutions such as servers, storage services, base stations, routers, and industrial control devices, and all of them  need to be powered with an OS. 

The openEuler is part of Huawei's broader push to achieve a unified OS architecture for these devices. The openEuler program was initially announced back in 2019 as an open source operating system. The launch on Saturday is an updated one.

Huawei said since openEuler became open source, more than 6,000 developers and more than 100 companies, universities, organizations and institutions have joined the openEuler community.

At a media roundtable held on the sidelines of Huawei Connect, an industry conference, on Friday, Xu also said the company is quite confident of achieving the target of having 300 million devices powered by HarmonyOS by the end of this year, including more than 200 million for its own devices and the rest coming from third-party company equipment.

Huawei said last week that more than 120 million users have upgraded their smartphones to HarmonyOS 2. 

Huawei also highlighted that despite the current challenges of chip shortages amid the US government restrictions, the company will not sell its smartphone business for sure. 

Xu also said the company's cloud business is growing very fast. Though the cloud unit is still suffering losses, Huawei has no plans to sell, divert or list its cloud businesses, Xu added. 

Huawei also confirmed media reports that its auto chip suppliers have gained an approval from the US government to ship low-end products to the company.