After Huawei’s Hongmeng OS, a new player is welcomed in the operating system field. At today's Xiaomi conference, Xiaomi's ThePaper OS will be officially unveiled; and in early November, vivo will also release its self-developed operating system. Together with Honor's MagicOS and OPPO's Pantanal system, mainstream domestic mobile phone manufacturers will have their own operating systems by then.


Text | Sina Technology Zhang Jun

There are two reasons behind this:

First, Huawei is sanctioned and cannot use Google GMS;

The second is to seize the dividends of the Internet of Everything era.

However, embarrassingly, many industry experts pointed out that this may also make the mobile operating system ecology more fragmented, the device interconnection between each company will be more fragmented, and the adaptation workload of developers may even increase.

Each company has to build its own operating system. Does it enhance its autonomy or cause a waste of resources?

Huawei’s lessons learned from the past


Senior industrial economic observer Liang Zhenpeng told Sina Technology that the reason why mobile phone manufacturers have developed their own operating systems is first of all because the emergence of Huawei's Hongmeng OS has triggered the industry's awareness of the independence of operating systems. Manufacturers hope that by having their own operating systems, they can reduce their dependence on other systems and achieve greater autonomy.

In May 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce added Huawei and its subsidiaries to the "Entity List." Google has also suspended some business dealings with Huawei and stopped providing technical support for Huawei's Android system and Google services. In desperation, Huawei turned its "spare tire" Hongmeng OS into a regular product and officially launched Hongmeng OS 1.0 at the developer conference that year.

The incident also made domestic mobile phone manufacturers other than Huawei realize the importance of independence in core technologies such as chips and operating systems.

Secondly, Liang Zhenpeng believes that self-developed operating systems can provide better integration of hardware and software, thereby improving mobile phone performance, stability and user experience. In addition, manufacturers also hope to increase brand competitiveness and market reputation through differentiation of their own systems.

This has been reflected in Huawei's Hongmeng OS. According to the latest data released by Huawei, the number of Hongmeng ecological devices has exceeded 700 million. One month after the launch of Hongmeng OS4, the number of upgraded devices has reached 60 million, with an average of 1.2 million new users added every day. In the days when Huawei mobile phones lacked 5G, Hongmeng OS brought huge stickiness to Huawei mobile phone users and reduced user losses.

For Xiaomi, Honor, OPPO and vivo, they also need their own Hongmeng OS to maintain core technology independence and create their own high-end brand labels. Take Xiaomi and Honor as examples. Both companies have put forward the slogan of benchmarking against Apple, and iOS is one of Apple's core competitiveness. To create a high-end brand image, both hardware and software are indispensable.

In an ideal world, domestic mobile phone manufacturers would jointly build and use an operating system, which is the best choice to expand their independent ecosystem. However, under various practical conditions, this ideal cannot be realized.

At the beginning of the release of Hongmeng OS, Huawei announced that it would be open source. Huawei's ideal situation is that Chinese hardware manufacturers and software developers can build their own ecosystem based on Hongmeng OS. In this way, not only will Huawei not be choked by foreign technology, but China will also be able to cultivate its own operating system ecosystem. When asked whether Hongmeng OS would be open to Xiaomi, OV and other manufacturers, relevant Huawei executives also expressed their hope to work with all smart hardware manufacturers to create a better ecological platform. "Huawei is also exploring the possibility of cooperation with them."

But the flowing water is intentional, but the falling flowers are ruthless. After Hongmeng OS was announced as open source, an insider from a mobile phone manufacturer once bluntly told Sina Technology that even if it is open source, several other mobile phone manufacturers will still be wary of using Hongmeng OS. "We don't know if they are really sincere. The lifeline is only safe if it is in our own hands."

This is why mobile phone manufacturers did not choose to use the open source Hongmeng OS, but started from scratch.

New opportunities for the Internet of Everything?

It is worth noting that not only mobile phones, but also the self-developed operating systems of mobile phone manufacturers are also targeting the Internet of Everything.

This is especially true for Hongmeng OS. Wang Chenglu, the father of Hongmeng OS and former president of Huawei’s consumer business software, has repeatedly emphasized that Hongmeng OS is not a backup for Android, but is geared towards the future trend of the Internet of Everything. In Huawei's plan, Hongmeng OS is to connect multiple terminals such as mobile phones, PCs, TVs, cars, and watches.

In fact, in the 5G era, various types of smart terminals are ushering in a huge explosion. How to achieve convenient interconnection and collaboration between devices is a common pain point faced by all enterprises. For example, when there are more and more devices in the home, the networking process is particularly cumbersome; the hardware, communication protocols, software systems, etc. involved among mobile phones, PCs, and tablets are all different, making collaboration quite complicated.

Therefore, the underlying system-level interconnection solution can fundamentally solve the problem.

This is even more true for Xiaomi. In 2019, when Huawei was cut off from Google’s GMS service and launched Hongmeng OS, Xiaomi also began to develop a purely self-developed general-purpose system MinaOS in parallel; in 2020, Xiaomi launched the Internet of Things software platform Xiaomi Vela, which is considered to have an obvious intention to benchmark Hongmeng OS. However, the relevant person in charge of Xiaomi said at the time that Xiaomi Vela was mainly positioned to run on devices with limited computing power such as smart homes and wearables. Mobile phones, TVs, PCs, and routers were not the target applications of Xiaomi Vela. "Xiaomi Vela has a complementary and symbiotic relationship with operating systems such as Linux and Android, and together they provide suitable system platforms for different devices," he said.


But in 2021, the situation has changed again. That year, Xiaomi officially announced its entry into car manufacturing, and in the competition for smart cars, car OS was a very important part. For example, the Hongmeng smart cockpit of Huawei Smart Car Selection has become an important factor in attracting users to purchase. Therefore, self-developed car OS is a must for Xiaomi.

As a result, Xiaomi is also facing internal collaboration problems with multiple operating systems. For example, MIUI on mobile phones, Xiaomi Vela for IoT devices, car OS for cars, and MinaOS, a general system. In the end, Xiaomi decided to integrate multiple internal systems.

According to Xiaomi Chairman Lei Jun, Xiaomi ThePaper OS combines the software architecture of four systems: MIUI, Vela, Mina, and car OS at the bottom level. With a R&D team of more than 5,000 people, it will be oriented to the entire ecosystem of people and cars.

At this point, the layout of Xiaomi's Thermal OS is also very clear, and it will directly compete with Huawei's Hongmeng OS. In fact, other mobile phone manufacturers have the same goal. For example, Honor's MagicOS has been applied to mobile phones, PCs, and tablets; OPPO is seeking more smart hardware manufacturers and developers to integrate Pantanal's capabilities; at the vivo Developer Conference on November 1, vivo will also release a self-developed operating system. Not surprisingly, the positioning will also be for the Internet of Everything scenario.

What are the challenges?

The ideal is beautiful, but the reality is cruel, and operating an operating system is obviously not an easy task.

An Guangyong, an expert from the Credit Management Committee of the Allied Mergers and Acquisitions Association, believes that the operating system threshold is relatively high, requires a large amount of funds, and a long time of research and development, and it is difficult to do it well just by throwing money at it. For example, many companies from various countries have challenged the Windows operating system before, but all ended in failure. Mobile phone manufacturers invest huge amounts of money and manpower in self-developed operating systems, but they face many challenges such as technical difficulties, market competition, and user habits to succeed. And success does not rely solely on capital investment. At the same time, many conditions are required, including the integration of industry, academia and research, and long-term talent training.

You know, Microsoft, Google and Apple have spent decades cultivating prosperous application services and ecosystems. Microsoft, which dominates the PC operating system, suffered a disastrous failure when it launched the Windows Phone mobile system. Google and Apple, the two mobile operating system giants, also failed to achieve seamless collaboration across multiple terminals. Domestically, Internet giant Alibaba also launched YunOS for mobile phones. Due to insufficient ecology and pressure from Google, it was renamed AliOS in 2017, and its focus also shifted to IoT.

Liang Zhenpeng believes that if mobile phone manufacturers want to successfully develop their own operating systems, they need to face the following challenges. First of all, technical strength is the key, and a large amount of R&D resources, including manpower, money and time, need to be invested to provide strong basic functions, compatibility and security; secondly, in order to attract users and developers, it is also necessary to establish a sound ecosystem and provide a wealth of applications and development tools to enhance the usability and charm of the system; in addition, it also needs to face the pressure of market competition. For example, compared with mainstream Android and Apple systems, to gain user recognition, it needs to have obvious advantages in the ease of use, stability and ecological adaptability of the product.

Take Huawei's Hongmeng OS as an example. Although it is making rapid progress, there is still a big gap between it and Android and iOS.


According to data released by the research organization Counterpoint, in the first quarter of this year, Hongmeng OS’s share of the Chinese market increased to 8%, iOS was 20%, and Android was 72%; in the global market, Hongmeng OS’s share was 2%, iOS and Android were 20% and 78% respectively.

It has been four years since the launch of Hongmeng OS. With Huawei's funds and R&D strength, it is still so difficult, not to mention other mobile phone manufacturers. This is destined to be a long ecological construction process.

It is also worth noting that Liang Zhenpeng pointed out that each mobile phone manufacturer developing its own operating system may lead to more fragmentation and separation of the mobile operating system ecosystem. In the past, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers mainly used the Android operating system, so developers could develop and adapt in a targeted manner. Nowadays, various manufacturers have launched self-developed systems, which requires developers to adapt to more versions, increasing the difficulty of development and resource consumption. In addition, for users, diversified operating system choices may lead to incompatibility and inconsistency in their usage habits, causing certain confusion and learning costs. Discrete operating systems may also cause waste and duplication of resources in basic frameworks, drivers, security protection and other aspects.

While applauding mobile phone manufacturers for daring to develop their own operating systems, the possible ecological fragmentation and independent fighting will also be a long-term problem that remains to be solved.

access:

Jingdong Mall