Huawei has revealed its own in-house operating system will be called HarmonyOS. Previous names mooted for the operating system have been HongMeng OS and Ark OS. We've known about those names through various trademark filings spotted in Europe and the US. 

The headline use for the new software is likely to be in some Huawei phones but as the threat from the US trade ban is abating, it's questionable if the OS will be a straight-up replacement for Android on flagship devices. Could it launch on a toe-in-the-water version of the upcoming Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro

Indeed, Huawei mentioned at the launch that it intends to keep using Android (which could be alongside Harmony, of course) but says that if it "can not use Android in future [it can] immediately switch to HarmonyOS".

Huaweis Potential Android Replacement Is Called Harmony Os image 2
Huawei

The OS has been developed to work across numerous devices - Huawei says that it will first be used for smart devices like smart watches, smart screens, in-vehicle systems, and smart speakers and that it could run Android and HTML 5 apps in the future. It'll apparently work with devices with vastly different amounts of memory. 

There's an incoming Honor smart TV which will also run the OS (Honor is a Huawei brand). 

Huawei chief Richard Yu says that Harmony is "completely different from Android and iOS. It is a microkernel-based, distributed OS that delivers a smooth experience across all scenarios [with] seamless collaboration across devices." It'll also be open source, which means that other manufacturers will be able to use it. 

Since we learned that Huawei was developing the software earlier this year it has been revealed that Huawei has actually been working on it for some time - some reports suggested the company first mooted the idea of it seven years ago

Huawei is holding its developer conference in Shenzhen right now and we'll bring you more details on the new operating system as we get them. We'll also bring you a detailed look at Huawei's new Android-based user interface for Android Q, called EMUI 10.