Photo/Li Shiqi (NBD)

June 5 (NBD) -- A micro film titled "Wukong" recently took social media by storm after being released by Huawei and sparked people's anticipation for Huawei's self-developed Hongmeng operating system (OS).

The micro film tells a story of a village boy adoring "Monkey King" (a character in Chinese mythology) who is breaking free of the world before creation where Hongmeng is a symbolized character and starting something new from scratch.

Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, revealed in late May that Huawei will unveil the self-developed OS this fall at the earliest or next spring at the latest. 

According to information at the Trademark Office of China's National Intellectual Property Administration, Huawei has registered a trademark for Hongmeng, and the valid term of the trademark is from May 14, 2019 to May 13, 2029. 

All smartphones manufactured by Huawei in the future will be preloaded with the Hongmeng OS, which has been made compatible with phones, computers, cars, tablets, and other electronic devices, being sufficient to create a new software ecosystem for Huawei, according to Yu.

Reports emerged in early June that Huawei is testing Hongmeng on 1 million smartphones, but when reached by National Business Daily (NBD) Monday, a source with the company remarked, "We are totally unaware of the test."   

Despite the great expectations, some have concerns over the development of the homegrown system. 

Sun Yanbiao, president of Mobile No. 1 Research Institute, pointed out the growth of OSs depend largely on the building of ecosystem, which will take a long time and be based on a vast user base. 

Taking the Android system for example, Sun said it took almost four years for Google to make Android a powerful rival of Apple's iOS even with strong support from mobile phone manufacturers. 

A research report by China Merchants Securities in August 2018 also mentioned, the key factor that restrains the development of China's proprietary OSs is not technology itself, but the lack of an ecological environment with quality applications. 

However, Xiang Ligang, founder of a portal website for the communications industry, showed strong confidence in Hongmeng in the interview with NBD on Tuesday. 

He argued that both Huawei and Apple delivered more than 200 million smartphones last year, and Huawei will be, without doubt, capable of building its own ecosystem. 

Xiang believes Hongmeng will reshape the global OS market based on a deep understanding of OSs and better user experience. "Huawei has said Hongmeng enables compiling from the underlying layer, which gives it an edge over Android in terms of efficiency," he noted. 

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn