How powerful is Huawei's Hongmeng system? It is expected to be seen in cars as early as next year

On August 9, Huawei Consumer Business CEO Richard Yu announced the official launch of the Hongmeng system to 5,000 attendees at the main venue and to the world. Hongmeng's English name, HarmonyOS, means "harmony". Richard Yu said that the Hongmeng system hopes to bring more harmony and convenience to the world.

There have been various professional interpretations of the "Hongmeng" system. The basic feature of this system is a full-scenario distributed OS based on a microkernel, which can be expanded on demand to achieve broader system security. It is mainly used in the Internet of Things and is characterized by low latency, even down to milliseconds or even sub-milliseconds.

Hongmeng's microkernel is about 90% smaller than the Android Linux macrokernel. When facing different types of devices, Hongmeng system can achieve flexible deployment. When the device needs a kernel of a certain size, Hongmeng can call and load a kernel of that size. In order to achieve flexible deployment, Hongmeng system virtualizes hardware resources, which can be shared and called at any time.

For users, this design architecture allows different devices to serve as terminals and peripherals for each other, and users can call on the best hardware resources under the same ID. For developers, an APP developed once can be deployed on multiple terminals at the same time, greatly improving development efficiency.

Therefore, Huawei's Hongmeng system is more like a "tentacle" to welcome the era of the Internet of Things. When faced with a variety of terminal facilities, Hongmeng system can be used at any time and at will. This kind of scene like in a science fiction movie is now clearly "outlined" in the Hongmeng system.

At present, the mainstream operating systems are based on dedicated terminals. Microsoft Windows is mainly used for PCs, while Google's Android is used for mobile phones and tablets. Apple uses the IOS system for mobile phones and iPads.

Each system is actually a "barrier". Not only can they not be connected to each other, but even under the same operating system, the use of different hardware is still an "island". The Hongmeng system draws a big circle. First of all, the strong integration of this circle with other systems also makes the boundary of this circle continue to expand. Secondly, the various systems in the circle are connected and interacted. This circle is the IoT ecosystem created by Huawei.

At the beginning of this year, Huawei proposed the "1+8+N" strategy. 1 refers to the mobile phone, which is also the main entrance; PC, tablet, TV, image, glasses, watch, motorcycle, and headphones are 8 auxiliary entrances. According to the strategic concept announced at that time, in travel scenarios, the car computer can completely replace some functions of the mobile phone. When people enter the car, the display, audio, and GPS can all be left to the car computer, while the mobile phone is mainly responsible for calculations and works silently. In this way, the car computer and the mobile phone are combined, and there is no need to develop the car computer into a mobile phone.

In fact, such an interactive mode between car computers and mobile phones has already been attempted to be realized by new car computer systems of car manufacturers. However, it is obvious that Huawei has greatly expanded the breadth of related devices and application scenarios through the Hongmeng system, which has far exceeded the "vision" of the current car companies' car computer systems.

Huawei has stated on many occasions that it will not build cars, but the release of a number of car-related technologies and platforms shows that Huawei has long begun to plan to enter the vast market behind smart cars. During the Shanghai Auto Show, Huawei became one of the busiest companies, participating in many auto show activities. Ren Zhengfei, the head of Huawei, mentioned in an internal speech that the Internet of Vehicles, artificial intelligence and edge computing are the three major breakthroughs for Huawei in the future.

In 2019, Huawei Auto not only established the Intelligent Automotive Solutions BU, but also released the "Autonomous Driving Mobile Network" solution and announced its digital solutions, including cloud services, intelligent driving (on-board computing platform and intelligent driving subsystem solutions), intelligent networking (4G/5G on-board mobile communication modules/T-Box, on-board networks), smart connectivity and smart energy modules. 

At present, the car machine entrance has become a new "battlefield" for Internet companies to compete for. Behind the entrance is the temptation of the travel ecosystem share and the huge dividends tied to the travel scene users. BAT and Apple have already entered the market. While the Hongmeng system is still being developed and improved, Huawei has accelerated its competition for the car machine system market.

At the Smart Mobility Forum of the Huawei Developer Conference on August 10, Huawei presented the HUAWEI HiCar solution in detail to developers. HiCar realizes the interconnection between mobile phones and car machines, and can establish a channel between mobile phones and car machines, extend the applications and services of mobile phones to cars, and realize full interconnection between cars, mobile phones, and other IOT devices.

It is expected that by the end of September 2019, HUAWEI HiCar will support hundreds of models from dozens of car manufacturers (including pre-installed and post-installed), and support five major categories of apps such as navigation, music, smart home, audiobooks, and driving care. The ecosystem is still expanding. This is obviously the "prototype" of the Hongmeng system, and it is expected that the Hongmeng operating system will be seen in cars as early as next year.

In addition to its application in vehicle systems, the Hongmeng system's ability to interconnect with other smart devices and its low latency characteristics also have broad application space in the future in realizing autonomous driving and establishing a vehicle-road collaborative network. The Hongmeng system points out a new path for the development of automotive intelligence and networking, which makes us look forward to the future of automobiles!