Huawei Hongmeng: the heart is higher than the sky, and the life is thinner than the paper

Chaos is beginning to open, and Hongmeng is beginning. According to the explanation of Handian.com, the ancients believed that before the world was opened up, it was a chaotic vitality, and this natural vitality was called Hongmeng. The operating system independently developed by Huawei is named after this, and the implication is beautiful and profound.

In fact, the birth of Hongmeng did carry Huawei’s vision. Huawei even hopes that it will become the third largest operating system after Apple and Android from scratch. However, there is no precedent for domestic enterprises to set foot in the mobile phone operating system market, just like the beginning of Hongmeng. Therefore, while carrying Huawei’s “romanticism” feelings and the expectations of countless Chinese people, Huawei Hongmeng is also under great pressure.

For example, some insiders believe that Hongmeng was born with the loss. Although his heart is higher than heaven, his life is thinner than paper. “Yu Jian Column” believes that Hongmeng is really out of reach if it wants to compete with IOS and Android systems on the same platform and get a share of the world.

Huawei performs a one-man show, and Hongmeng’s ecology is difficult to take shape

In fact, Huawei began to develop the Hongmeng operating system many years ago, and early rumors about its secret development are common. It is said that at that time, Huawei was just playing a defensive war to prevent being stuck by overseas technologies one day, so it also left a “spare tire” for its Android system, which was used first, and the development speed should not be slow.

Huawei’s concern is not unreasonable, but unexpectedly, Huawei’s crisis has come ahead of schedule. Since the chip supply in the United States was cut off in 2020, Huawei immediately fell into the awkward situation of “no core available” and precipitous decline in shipments of its mobile phone brand.

In May 2019, Google also unilaterally stopped the Google service on Huawei’s mobile phones. As a result, the Hongmeng system, which has a research and development cycle of several years, also moved from Plan B behind the scenes to the front.

At the same time, its independently developed Kirin chips are also unable to be self-sufficient because of immature technology and domestic production capacity. As a result, Huawei has gradually fallen into a difficult situation of both software and hardware. In this era, Huawei has poured a lot of manpower and financial resources into the company and launched the Hongmeng operating system, which is also the first domestic operating system.

However, the Hongmeng system problem seems to be difficult to solve Huawei’s problem. The most direct performance is that it has been more than three years since Hongmeng released in 2019, and the number of users has exceeded 320 million after upgrading to version 3.0. However, no mobile phone manufacturer is willing to join. Its dream of building intelligent hardware and the Internet of Things based on Hongmeng’s system is like a castle in the air.

According to the analysis, Hongmeng system encounters such a dilemma, which is not nowhere to be found. This is directly related to its position in the industry, its competitive relationship with friends, and Huawei’s high expectations of Hongmeng.

First of all, from the perspective of smart phone manufacturers, Hongmeng system is dispensable. Because they have already grafted their own brand advantage, tonal UI and other system designs on the basis of Android system open source, and even built the Android application market. To replace the system means to subvert the entire software ecosystem. On the one hand, the cost is too high, on the other hand, it is unnecessary.

Take Xiaomi OV outside Huawei as an example. Although it is also based on the Android kernel, OPPO has its own ColorOS, vivo has Funtouch OS, Xiaomi has MIUI, and Meizu has Flyme. At the same time, such smart phone manufacturers have corresponding IoT strategic layout and software service revenue business based on their own customized systems. Therefore, in public and private, such manufacturers are more inclined to take the initiative in their own hands, so that they will have greater development space in the future, and will not be subject to others.

Secondly, compared with Android, Huawei’s independence as an operating system cannot be compared. Some insiders describe the relationship between Huawei’s smartphone business and operating system business as “both an athlete and a referee”. As a result, Huawei’s smart phones are directly competitive with other friends. Once competitors adopt the Hongmeng system, they will undoubtedly help their competitors. Obviously, without the pattern of mobile phone manufacturers, it will be big enough to ignore competitors like Huawei.

Third, Huawei’s Hongmeng system is very different from Apple’s system and Android system. The scale of users of Huawei and Apple IOS systems in the world is not of the same magnitude, and other manufacturers cannot cooperate with them. Therefore, Hongmeng system can only be applied to Huawei smartphones and a small number of newly developed smart hardware products.

However, as we all know, the sales of smart phones, which account for the largest number of Huawei’s hardware, have dropped out of the top list because of their continued lack of core. It will obviously take some time before they can achieve large-scale mass production of chips. As a result, Huawei can only bet the incremental space of Hongmeng system users on new intelligent hardware products, such as intelligent autonomous vehicle, intelligent wearable devices, etc. However, compared with the scale of Huawei’s smart phones, such products are still like a natural barrier.

It can be seen that it is almost inevitable for Huawei to play a one-man role in the domestic operating system. Even if Huawei has increased its power in system software research and development, and has made rapid progress in chip factories and chip production capacity, it is also difficult to solve the above ecological problems.

It’s hard to escape the suspicion that Android is a condom, but it’s really hard to compete under the fame

As we all know, PC computers and smart phone operating systems are rare in the world. In fact, this is not because of the difficulty of operating system research and development, but because it is difficult to build a software ecosystem with a certain number of users. While Huawei has limited growth in its hardware and software users, it is obviously not easy to make Hongmeng popular, or even cover the world.

On the one hand, the market dispute over whether Huawei Hongmeng system is embedded in Android has not stopped, and there is no conclusion. Although from the perspective of developers, the underlying architecture and even the program code of Hongmeng system have abandoned the open source part of Google and reconstructed the Android system. However, the interaction experience of Hongmeng system and Android system is too similar, which makes it difficult for ordinary users to distinguish their competitiveness compared with Android system.

Therefore, Hongmeng system is frequently accused of covering Android, and the voice of doubt focuses on the replacement of the “skin” of UI visual experience compared with Android. As a result, some netizens who do not know the truth believe that Hongmeng System has not become a substitute for Android market after all, but a chicken rib of “no fish and no fowl”, perhaps due to its lack of technological innovation, and even its lack of innovation in operating experience.

In fact, this is only a superficial phenomenon. The deeper reason is that Microsoft, the giant that monopolized PC operating system in the early years, launched WP operating system with Nokia, and finally failed in the process. In contrast, Huawei was in the same situation and played the same role in the industry as Microsoft at that time. The problems caused by Huawei were also strikingly similar.

For example, due to the insufficient market share of Huawei’s smart phones and the fact that smart phone manufacturers also consider the competition, they are reluctant to adapt. The result, of course, is that the mobile operating system that Microsoft is betting on cannot make ends meet. Whether Huawei will follow the lead of Microsoft and Nokia after launching Hongmeng is also uncertain.

On the other hand, there are few native applications of Chunhongmeng at present. It has to be acknowledged that, after the operating system market is basically divided by IOS and Android, Hongmeng must seize the market of the two to stand out.

The cruel reality is that the IOS system market dedicated to Apple cannot be replaced by Hongmeng, and it is not easy for Hongmeng to penetrate the market that has been nibbled by Android. On the contrary, in order to make Huawei smartphones and other hardware products experience better, Hongmeng system also needs to take into account the adaptability and use experience with other applications on the market, which will undoubtedly increase its development costs.

At the same time, from the perspective of application software developers, no one may be willing to develop an operating system with a small number of users and few people, which will also lead to Hongmeng system, or the lack of a sufficient number of application software suitable for it for a long time.

Therefore, despite the rejection of smartphone manufacturers, from the perspective of input and output of application software developers, perhaps only a few domestic mainstream head APPs have enough financial resources to take into account this part of the market. Small and medium-sized enterprises may find it difficult to give consideration to the application software development under Hongmeng ecosystem, or even give up this part of Hongmeng system users.

Overseas market expansion is blocked, and Hongmeng’s ceiling is obvious

In recent years, it has become a trend for domestic smartphone manufacturers and super applications to go abroad. Although for domestic enterprises, this is a very positive signal, because going overseas means a larger blue ocean market.

But for Huawei, this trend is to let competitors gain points and lose their position in the industry. For example, since Huawei broke off the relationship with Google and its chips were cut off, its global smartphone shipments fell precipitously.

It is understood that in 2021, Huawei will no longer be included in the global top 3 smartphone shipments. Especially since Huawei was stripped of its glory, its market share has plummeted. Data shows that the sales of Huawei mobile phones in China in 2021 will be even lower than its previous sub brand glory. However, putting such market data into Hongmeng’s future and future obviously leaves Hongmeng little room for imagination.

At the same time, the domestic mobile phone manufacturer, Xiaomi OV, has a very broad overseas market layout. Unlike domestic Android phones, the overseas Android phones use Google’s unified Android original system. The corresponding application software is also developed based on Google’s original service framework and downloaded by users through the relevant application market. Moreover, the ecological experience of Google GMS+original Android Auto has been recognized by people all over the world, and it is almost impossible for external systems to replace it in a short time.

Therefore, from the perspective of overseas users, once you choose to build a smart phone of Hongmeng system, you cannot enjoy Google’s GMS service. This also means that a smart phone with powerful functions has become a functional phone in the last century due to its inability to apply various colorful software freely. As for Hongmeng system, this situation is extremely embarrassing. Because Hongmeng will not be able to become the mainstream of the market, whether it is using domestic mobile phones or directly using Huawei mobile phones to enter the overseas market, which is no different from being able to stand on the overseas market.

In this market pattern, it is obviously more difficult for Huawei to become the world’s third largest domestic operating system. Even though Hongmeng has taken part of the market share from the original Android market. However, the scale of the devices and users it covers is still far from that of IOS and Android.

It can be seen that the performance of Huawei’s mobile phone market is somewhat weak, and Hongmeng is more difficult to enter the overseas market. Even with the support of other smart hardware products such as smart wearables, Huawei Hongmeng’s ceiling is visible to the naked eye.

epilogue

As one of the first enterprises to gallop in the overseas market, Huawei has made great achievements in the early years by providing network equipment, services and solutions to customers around the world in the telecommunications field, and has made indelible contributions in the construction and updating of global 3G, 4G and 5G network infrastructure.

However, with the constant development and growth of Huawei, the problem of technology “choking the neck” in western countries has become increasingly prominent, even strangling the fate of Huawei and Hongmeng.

Fortunately, Huawei has always been prepared with the development concept of “being prepared for danger in times of peace”, and Hongmeng is an innovation and masterpiece under the development concept of Huawei. Although Hongmeng still faces many difficulties in its development, as Ren Zhengfei of Huawei has repeatedly conveyed to the outside world, survival is the greatest driving force.

In any case, the advent of Hongmeng has amazed the world. Although the pipeline is difficult, the future is still promising.