Rumors said that after EMUI 11, Huawei will abandon the well-known proprietary user interface in favor of HarmonyOS 2.0. In general, this may happen eventually but not yet. Huawei is preparing a new version of the interface under the designation EMUI 11.1.
According to the source, EMUI 11.1 will be released in March. Presumably along with the new flagship Huawei P50. What innovations it will bring is not yet reported, but you should not count on something large-scale. At the same time, EMUI 11.1 will be based on the HarmonyOS core, but the full transition of current and future Huawei smartphones to HarmonyOS will take place after EMUI 11.1. This is likely to happen in the second half of this year.
Huawei’s HarmonyOS turns out to be a clone of Android 10
Since the announcement of HarmonyOS for smartphones by Huawei, there has been a debate on the web about how much the new mobile platform will differ from Android.
The problem was compounded by the limited access to the beta version of HarmonyOS. Now, Ron Amadeo from ArsTechnica Ron Amadeo was able to test it and draw conclusions.
HarmonyOS is “just Android 10” he said. He describes HarmonyOS as a fork of Android with an EMUI user interface and a few minor changes. At the same time, even the user interface remained an exact copy of the EMUI version that Huawei installs on its Android smartphones.
According to Amadeo, there is nothing wrong with creating Android forks and running as operating systems under your own brand; but you should do it openly and transparently:
Forking Android and launching your own rebranded operating system is totally fine. But be upfront about that. Say “HarmonyOS is a fork of Android” instead of “HarmonyOS is not a copy of Android”. Don’t call HarmonyOS “all-new” when pretty much the opposite is true.
Gizchina News of the week
In early January, a top Huawei manager announced that HarmonyOS is not a copy of iOS and Android and listed the main differences.
Huawei completely defeats Apple in the Chinese phone market in 2020
According to CINNO Research and Canalys, Huawei still comfortably leads the Chinese smartphone market. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) mobile phone quarterly tracking report, China’s smartphone market shipments in the fourth quarter of 2020 were approximately 86.4 million units, a slight increase of 0.3% year-on-year.
In the fourth quarter, shipments of Apple, OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi all increased significantly. In terms of specific rankings in the fourth quarter, Huawei, Apple, OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi ranked in the top five. Although Huawei fell 34.5% year-on-year, it still ranks first with a 25.1% share.
Looking at the entire 2020, Huawei is still miles ahead of the competition. It has a 38.3% market share which is a 0.1% decrease from its 38.4% market share of 2019. In second place is Vivo with a 17.7% market share. This shows that Huawei in the first position has a market share that is over 50% higher than second-place Vivo. Oppo, Xiaomi, and Apple rank third to fifth respectively. Except for Apple’s year-on-year growth, the other four manufacturers all have different degrees of decline.
In the fourth quarter, the Chinese 5G mobile phone shipments were about 60 million units. In 2020, the cumulative shipments were about 167 million units, accounting for more than 50%.
