Mubasher: China’s smartphone behemoth Huawei launched its own operating system (OS), which would go by the name of HongmengOS, English for the HarmonyOS.

HarmonyOS would initially be rolled out in China, with plans to expand it worldwide, the company’s consumer division Richard Yu said on Friday during the Huawei Developer Conference.

The OS, which would support an array of devices from smartphones to smart speakers and sensors, would be used first on “smart screen products” later this year, Yu said.

Over the next three years, the OS will be installed on devices, including wearables and car head units.

It is worth noting that HarmonyOS could be used by other device manufacturers, which could expand its scale, and make it more appealing for more developers.

 “Many” device makers have showed interest in using the OS, Yu said without mentioning specific names.

Huawei announced last May that it had its own OS in the pipeline, after Google suspended its business with the Chinese telecoms equipment maker.

Google’s move came after the US administration blacklisted the company on the so-called Entity List, restricting US firms from providing their products to the tech giant.

Later on, the US relaxed some of those restrictions, allowing Google to do business with Huawei for 90 days.

In that regard, the situation remained “unclear” whether Huawei could still use Google’s Android, Yu said, noting that products equipped with Android would not still be impacted by any ban.

 Yu stated that Huawei would favour using Android on its handsets, but could shift easily to HarmonyOS, if necessary.

“If we cannot use it in the future, we can immediately switch to HarmonyOS,” Yu said.