Huawei is a company that has experienced a troubled history in the smartphone sector in recent years. In fact, Huawei went from being practically the leader in smartphones sold all over the world, to taking action after US banwhich then contributed to the decline in its market share.
Currently Huawei devices are still on the market and are still interesting, but they don’t have Google services, a component that is important for many, especially when talking about European and American users. In this re-adaptation process, Huawei has also developed a independent operating system from Android, called HarmonyOS.
HarmonyOS appears as an independent operating system but not completely foreign to Android. In fact, until now HarmonyOS has always been able to read and install apk files, i.e. the files that allow the installation of apps on Android. The news of the last few hours consists in the fact that HarmonyOS is preparing to abandon Android libraries.
Is called HarmonyOS Next the new version of the operating system that would be without Android libraries. In fact, this version of HarmonyOS was presented in China several months, even at the beginning of the year, but only now it turns out that many Chinese technology companies, which clearly aim to bring their services and apps to Huawei models, are rushing to hire developers native HarmonyOS apps.
Therefore, it seems clear that HarmonyOS Next will definitively abandon support for Android apps, and that Huawei’s operating system will only support installation files with HAP extension.
It therefore seems that the time has come for Huawei definitively cuts all ties with Android. We will need to understand how much this move will have a positive impact on western market. According to the latest rumors emerging from China, HarmonyOS Next should make its public debut in early 2024but it cannot be ruled out that for the European markets Huawei prefers to leave the current HarmonyOS which still enjoys support for apk files.
9to5Google
