Huawei to launch new mobile operating system in fight for survival

Embattled Chinese tech giant Huawei will launch a homegrown new mobile operating system on Wednesday as it fights for survival in the smartphone arena after the United States blocked it from using Android. Huawei will unveil its first mobile devices loaded with the new HarmonyOS in an online event broadcast from its headquarters in the southern city of Shenzhen beginning at 8pm (1200 GMT). The development of HarmonyOS has been closely watched by the tech world since Donald Trump’s White House in 2018 began an aggressive campaign to short-circuit the global ambitions of Huawei, which Washington considers a potential Chinese espionage and cybersecurity threat. Aside from the geopolitics, no company has successfully taken on the mobile OS duopoly now dominated by Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS systems, a battleground littered with the likes of flame-outs including Blackberry, Microsoft’s Windows Phone and the Amazon Fire device. Analysts say Huawei likewise faces a tough battle to carve out a sizeable share of the OS pie. The world’s largest supplier of telecom base station equipment and other networking gear, Huawei entered the handset business in 2003, using Android. It became...