Huawei Wang Chenglu: Hongmeng OS is not a copy of Android and iOS

At the “2020 Science and Technology Billboard” co-sponsored by Sina Finance Client and Sina Technology on January 12, 2021. Wang Chenglu, president of Huawei’s consumer BG software department, stated in the keynote speech that the emergence of Hongmeng OS is not a substitute system for responding to US sanctions. Hongmeng OS is not a copy of Android, nor is it a copy of iOS. It is the original OS that will bring a new change in the IoT era.

During the speech, he said that global smartphone shipments have declined slightly since 2018, and will drop by about 3% in 2019. Due to the impact of the epidemic in 2020, the overall decline will be even greater, and it is a very certain fact that the shipment volume of the entire smartphone will not increase.

At the same time, the length of time consumers uses mobile phones has basically stabilized at 4 to 5 hours starting in 2018. All this information indicates that the development of the entire smartphone-based mobile Internet industry has reached a very important transitional period.

The origin of Huawei’s Hongmeng OS, the company goal is to use a system to solve all IoT hardware equipment problems. “The outside world may have speculation whether Huawei developed the Hongmeng system because of US sanctions. I tell everyone that it is not like this.” Wang Chenglu said that the real project development of Hongmeng OS was established in May 2016, when Huawei was thinking about smartphones.

He revealed that Huawei’s goal is to conservatively estimate the installed capacity of Huawei’s own equipment to be 200 million units, or far more than 200 million units in 2021; more importantly, Hongmeng OS will also be open to third-party equipment, with conservative installed capacity. It will reach 100 million units. In total, in 2021, the hardware base of Hongmeng system rich equipment will be 300 to 400 million units.

The following is the Wang Chenglu’s speech:

Dear friends, hello everyone, I am very happy to have the opportunity to share with you the progress of Hongmeng OS and some of our thoughts on future development. Thank you, Sina for inviting us!

Today I would like to introduce some of our considerations for the future from the background of the development of the entire industry.

I think you may have seen these materials on various occasions. The industry has been talking about the development of IoT for more than ten years. We have made many attempts in various industries and companies, including academia, how to make IoT truly come to life In people’s lives. From the current point of view, although we have a relatively large increase in the amount of IoT devices, the changes brought to people’s lives are still in the initial stage. Now the entire industry is in a very good and critical turning point, because the emergence of smartphones from the first generation of iPhone in 2004 has truly brought the entire industry into the era of mobile Internet. In the past ten years, the development of our entire industry has been based on the smart phone hardware platform. Today we will look at this industry again. There are three very important information for everyone to refer to the development stage of this industry.

The first message: global smartphone shipments have declined slightly since 2018, and the overall decline in 2019 is probably more than 3%. In 2020, due to the impact of the epidemic, our overall decline will be even greater, but it is a very certain fact that the shipment volume of the entire smartphone will not increase.

The second message: In the past few years, whether it is the Android ecosystem or the Apple ecosystem, there may be few truly new apps. Except for Douyin, there may no longer be new apps in our entire industry.

The third very important indicator: the length of time consumers use mobile phones has basically stabilized at 4 to 5 hours starting in 2018.

These three pieces of information indicate that the development of our entire smartphone-based mobile Internet industry has reached a very, very important transitional period. Coupled with the continuous emergence of IoT hardware, I think this industry is in a very critical transition period.

What this picture wants to express is that in the past so many years, although the mobile industry with smartphones as the carrier has undergone very big changes, but we take a look at it, only on the platform of smartphones, our entire ecology is very prosperous. The entire smartphone-based apps add up to more than 4 million. But in addition to mobile phones, there are very few applications on smart watches, TVs, and cars. With less applications, consumers will be less motivated to use this device, because there is no service to use this device.

What caused it? The core is that the system running on each of our hardware devices is completely fragmented. Everyone is familiar or a little familiar. We list as many as 20 or 30. Such a state makes it very troublesome for developers to actually make an application based on other hardware platforms. Changing platforms differently, adapting differently, and doing applications on various new devices differently is a very large workload for him.

Another very challenging problem is that our large and small devices, if they have screens, have very large size differences. Whether it’s apps on Apple’s App Store or apps on Android, the real development workload accounts for the majority of UI adaptation. So many different sizes and resolutions, large and small, will double the overall development workload. From the consumer’s point of view, first, there are very few applications for smart devices other than mobile phones, and the convenience we bring to life with such devices is very limited. In addition, the different systems and different operation modes of each device are very expensive for consumers to learn. This is currently a very important bottleneck hindering the development of the entire mobile industry based on smartphones to the IoT industry. The bottleneck lies in the fragmentation of the system.

With the birth of Huawei Hongmeng OS, our goal is to be able to use a system to solve all the problems of large and small IoT hardware devices. The outside world may speculate whether Huawei developed the Hongmeng system because of US sanctions. I tell you “it is not the case.” We actually initiated the development of this system in May 2016. At that time, we were thinking about the future development of the smartphone industry, and it will reach its peak one day. Once the development of smart phones reaches its peak, what should the industry do in the future? We keep asking ourselves questions like this. With such a large terminal business as Huawei, it is impossible for us to put all the ecological foundations in other people’s systems. Therefore, these two questions prompt us to think about what kind of system we will do in the future. This is the core initial background of the birth of Hongmeng OS.

At that time, we made this system and set several goals: First, we hope to use a system to meet the loading requirements of all hardware devices, and no longer need different hardware to customize different systems. Secondly, it is very important. It seems to be very innovative today. Our system no longer treats each IoT hardware as an isolated device. In this system, all IoT hardware is integrated. . Third, in response to the current problems faced by developers, our aim is to solve the problems of developers. We hope that the business logic code written by developers once can be run on different devices. These are the first three target directions of the entire Hongmeng OS design, and we have gradually developed along this direction in the past few years.

The goal we hope to achieve is to use a system to meet the system loading requirements of all large and small hardware. For consumers, we hope that when consumers use so much hardware, it is as simple as using a smart phone today. We also hope that the business logic code that developers develop once in this system can be deployed on multiple devices. This is the goal of the entire Hongmeng system. I believe that once this goal is achieved, we may truly promote the rapid development of the entire IoT industry.

There is one point, I have just told you, it is a very important innovation, that is, our Hongmeng system treats multiple devices as a logical device. What is its specific implementation principle? I will use two pages of film below to explain it to everyone.

This picture expresses how the connections between our multiple devices are made today. You can see that these lines on the picture are connected to the border of the mobile phone in the middle. Today, mobile phones from other manufacturers have also made screen projections between mobile phones and large screens. Huawei also has an experience similar to screen projection. What is the difference between the two? Today I also want to use this opportunity to tell you about it.

For screen projections made by other manufacturers, it still treats TVs, mobile phones, and car cameras as four independent devices, which are connected through the upper application layer. This connection has a very big problem. That is, its versatility and its scalability are not good, because I have to adapt to different applications. Further development of this technology will bring great challenges to the entire industry. Each of our applications To adapt, this workload is unbearable. What does Hongmeng want to do? We hope that in the future, through this connection method of the entire soft bus, the physical connection of a single device can be realized through wireless connection, which is equivalent to breaking the boundary of each isolated physical device we see today. We integrate multiple devices wirelessly. This integration has nothing to do with the upper-layer application, and its versatility is very good. Second, as long as we continue to invest in the soft bus, to conquer the technology of the entire soft bus, we will make its scalability very good, and we hope that the connection of our soft bus in the future will be like on a device The PCB connection is the same. Let me tell you today that we have done it. Our entire bandwidth has reached 1.8 G, our delay is less than 20 milliseconds, and our packet loss tolerance has exceeded 30%. Therefore, we will continue to invest in the soft bus, so that the multi-device integration advocated by Hongmeng has a very, very good foundation. With this foundation, in the future, application developers no longer need to pay attention to which isolated hardware device your application is running on. You can call all the hyperterminal devices connected to this device.

To further understand, we hope to use this technology to achieve the future IoT scenarios expressed on the graph.

Below is a HyperTerminal one by one. The meaning of “super terminal” is that we integrate multiple isolated IoT devices into one through the Hongmeng system. After integration, our entire terminal is logically a new terminal, which means that consumers can define their own terminal according to their own scene requirements. For example, in office, I can integrate PC, Pad, and mobile phone. together. If I travel, I can integrate my watch, car, mobile phone, and so on. Of course, there will be many such scenarios, and consumers can decide which devices to integrate according to their needs for this device. With this, it is actually a huge opportunity for upper-level application developers. Because today all mobile phones, watches, including cars, all applications are still limited by the hardware capabilities and constraints of a single device itself. Once we use the Hongmeng system to form a super terminal, the upper-level application developers have the opportunity to break away from the limitations of the physical hardware capabilities of a single device, and it can call more hardware, and it will do what we cannot achieve with a single device today. An experience.

What does this experience look like? Below I use a few examples to give you a brief introduction, through the examples you may better understand.

First, the game. The scene of this game is that the mobile phone and the big screen form a new super terminal. The information transmitted by the somatosensory sensor like the gyroscope of the mobile phone is equivalent to operating the game when shaking. It can also be played by multiple people at the same time. We can join this game by scanning the code with our mobile phone. In fact, it uses the ability of the sensor on the mobile phone to judge your actions. The whole game is very different from that on a single device. Experience. With such capabilities, games are an advanced example, and many of our subsequent applications will be made to have a very different experience on a single device.

Second, the home furnishing field. Everyone here will hear or buy electrical equipment, everyone is talking about his home appliances are intelligent, intelligent is very important, one is networking. The second is that the device itself must be able to interact with people. The third is that this operation itself may not be restricted to the single device itself. If these three things cannot be done, consumers will not experience an intelligent experience. We have made innovations with domestic leading home appliance manufacturers. We hope that Hongmeng’s system will be installed on different home appliances and form a home super terminal with Hongmeng’s mobile phones. This allows us to see a very Home appliances that are difficult to interact and invisible are all visualized, which is very convenient for interaction. The following video will give you a good intuitive explanation, you can take a look.

We touch this oven with our mobile phone, and all the status of this oven can be seen on the mobile phone. We can look for recipes, one-click settings, this oven will set various parameters according to the requirements in the recipes. And once the oven is finished, it can be reported to the watch, so people don’t need to stay in the kitchen. If it is inconvenient, like the water dispenser underneath, we may use the method of “pointing one finger” or “scanning code”, which can also be connected, including the cooking machine. There are more. All kitchen equipment in the home can be visualized in this way to realize convenient interaction. Range hoods can be used for physical examinations, cleaning can be done including service reservations, etc., air purifiers can also be used, and air conditioners can also be used. Yes, all home appliances can be used in the same way. All ordinary people can use “touch” and “scan” at almost zero cost, and then they can connect with this kind of equipment, which is better than today. The net is too simple. And more importantly, it makes all home appliances visible on this screen of the mobile phone, and we can all do very rich interactions. This is what smart home appliances might look like in the future. To achieve this ability, it is through the Hongmeng system to get through its bottom layer. If there is no such system, we can connect so many large and small devices, then the price is too great.

The third example is travel. The most important thing about travel is convenience and safety. We have made an innovation based on Hongmeng with Didi Taxi. If you order a car on your mobile phone, it may not be convenient for you to hold your mobile phone when you are traveling. At this time, if you have taxi information It is very convenient to be able to display it on a mobile phone. The information is transferred to the watch, and you can see the time and license plate number of the vehicle. After getting in the car, you can still check the entire running status on the watch, or you can pay on the watch. When you are out, you may be carrying a lot of things in your hands. In this way, we can completely break away from the constraints of the original mobile phone, and we can get a very different convenient experience.

This is also an example of travel, we did it with Baidu. If we are riding a bike in the wild and need to navigate, today we may have to build a shelf on the car and put the phone on it. It may not be particularly convenient to look at in the sun. This example is also very good, and the same. We use the linkage between the watch and the mobile phone for navigation, and put the key navigation information on the watch. At this time, when we are riding a bicycle, it is convenient to lift the wrist to look at the watch, which can also achieve the same function.

In these few examples, we went from the south to the north to explain to everyone what Hongmeng is. Southbound means that whether we are in the office scene, in the home scene, or in the travel scene, we are all multi-devices together. Northbound is an application that can be used across multiple devices with different experiences.

The last example: office. I like this example very much, we did it with WPS. For example, we have a meeting where we discuss a plan. If the people we discuss the plan are not in the same meeting room and hold meetings in different places, it may not be easy for everyone to discuss the focus simultaneously, and efficiency will have an impact. With the Hongmeng system, it is also very easy. After the person in discussion puts his materials on a large screen, he also puts a QR code, no matter where the person is, in a different place, or in a different place. Office spaces are available. We can join the discussion here by scanning this QR code. Each of us will mark the focus of his attention so that other participants can see it. This method is actually another very good example, which is equivalent to that our mobile phones, Pads and large screens become office terminals for remote meetings, and the experience realized on this office terminal is to discuss a solution with all of us. It is very close. In this way, the efficiency and quality of our office have been greatly improved.

All of these applications are actually made by Huawei and our partners to make innovations. If other partners want to do it, what should we do? The picture on this page is for our prospects.

When we released Hongmeng 2.0 at Songshan Lake on September 10 last year, we said that we had taken an important step. Not only did Hongmeng enable Huawei’s own equipment, we also opened it to partners. Whether it is from SDK or source code, or modules developed, including development tools, we are open to hardware manufacturers. You can choose the most convenient way to develop your own hardware devices very flexibly. What’s more important is the DevEco tool. It loads the entire system from the loading of the entire system to the final test. We are completely integrated. It is very simple for everyone to produce Hongmeng hardware on this platform. We will continue to invest in the development of SDK, source code, development boards and modules in the future. There will be more modules released to everyone, and you can make choices based on your business needs.

Northbound is a few very important things for application developers, and these are the dreams of all developers in China. Whether it is a programming framework, whether it is our DevEco tool or a compiler, there is no system in China that has such a complete thing for developers before. All developers are based on the software of these systems in Europe and America. The problem brought by my own application is very fragmented. We hope that on this day when Hongmeng started, we will open up our programming framework, including our tools, and compilers to everyone, so that everyone can be based on this system and truly be in Huawei’s Hongmeng system, or China Develop your own applications based on the entire mobile operating system. With the precipitation of time, I believe that our framework and tools will become better and better. After this foundation is established, I think the stamina for the future development of our mobile industry is very sufficient.

Our goal is that in 2021, on Huawei’s own equipment, our installed capacity is conservatively estimated to be 200 million units. Our goal is still challenging. We hope to exceed 200 million units, or far exceed 200 million units. More importantly, we are opening up to third-party devices. According to our current communications with third-party partners, the conservative installed capacity will reach 100 million units. And I especially want to emphasize to everyone that these 100 million devices are all rich devices with strong interaction. For example, not counting light bulbs and sockets, we are all rich devices with strong interaction, such as Whiteboards, projectors, TVs, electronic notebooks, etc., the conservative installed capacity of these devices will be 100 million units. I believe that after the third-party partners fully understand the value of the Hongmeng system, this data may not only be 100 million units. In total, in 2021, the hardware foundation of Hongmeng system rich equipment will be 300 to 400 million units. I think this is a very good foundation for application developers and a very good start.

I want to focus on open source, which should be said to be of great concern to all partners, including everyone in the industry. When we released Hongmeng 2.0 on September 10th last year, at 8 o’clock that evening, our open source code was officially opened to the industry, and everyone can download it. One month after we announced open source, our volume growth has been very large. Our first open source is to open source the forward-looking code for small devices ranging from 128K RAM to 128M RAM. In April this year, our second phase of open source will proceed as scheduled. The open source in October will definitely proceed as scheduled, and we will communicate with our partners again. If you have stronger demands, we can even advance the third phase of open source a little bit earlier.

The emergence of the Hongmeng system itself is not that Huawei has made an alternative system in response to US sanctions. Hongmeng system is not a copy of Android, nor is it a copy of iOS. It is a panoramic operating system that truly faces the future IoT era. This operating system is different from today’s Android and iOS based only on mobile phones. When the real IoT comes in the future, such a system is needed to fully open up the bottom layer. Hongmeng has taken the first step, which is a very, very important first step.

In the past year or so, we have done a lot of innovations in both the hardware partners in the southbound and the northbound. We also welcome consumers, including friends from the media, including academia, to continue to give us Put forward opinions and suggestions, we continue to improve, I am very confident that China’s industry, academia, and our developers, etc., with everyone’s strength, we will definitely be able to integrate the entire IoT-based mobile Internet To do a good job in the industry and take root in China, I believe it will be a huge opportunity for us in all walks of life.

Today I will give you a brief introduction so much, thank you all!

(Via)