The Future of Huawei's Hongmeng OS: Bigger Than Android and Apple?

President Trump having recently suspended the ban originally placed on Huawei at the height of the contemporary economic sparring between the US and China, the tech behemoth is now expected to get back to business as usual with the major players in the American electronics market, such as Microsoft, Google and Qualcomm. Ren Zhengfei, Huawei's founding chairman and presiding CEO, optimistically soldiers on in his quest to develop an in-house, innovative operating system for the rivalry-beleagured company. The HongmengOS is expected to be officially debuted in August of this year.

RELATED: US GOVERNMENT ESCALATION OF FIGHT WITH HUAWEI WAS A LONG TIME COMING

What, you may well wonder, makes HongmengOS different, potentially better, or even worth all of the zeitgeist-y buzz it is currently receiving in multichannel tech forums?

The first and most poignant aspect of Hongmeng to be aware of is that the OS will reportedly not be bound by device, or even by primary device function. Hongmeng is said to be applicable to everything from routers to data centers, and every tablet in between.

Employing an open-ended invitation strategy concerning app creation for Hongmeng, what Zhengfei seems truly to be attempting to bring to fruition is essentially a highly internecine digital environment that will unify the aims of millions of users across all strata and tech-savvy stripe. 

A boasted processing delay of a mere 5 milliseconds laid the groundwork for the recent much-hyped, exclusive interview with the French Le Point magazine wherein Zhengfei expressed his belief that Hongmeng will outperform Android and iOS by roughly 60%.

While the operating system could certainly no longer be referred to as embryonic, detractors and skeptics worry that Hongmeng's advertised strengths may also belie unspoken, unaddressed weaknesses.

For example, one of the most commonly-voiced concerns stems from the notion that any operating system made in such a way as to be utilized on such a wide-ranging array of devices would likewise be susceptible to breach and vulnerability from the same number of avenues. 

With 225 million devices expected to ship carrying HongmengOS by the end of this year and exclusive trademarks applied for in multiple countries, the CEO of Huawei has made it clear that he is ready to gamble big on the company's homemade digital ecosystem.

Whether the tech world will see that big gamble matched by a definitive new operating system that is indeed bigger than Android and Apple remains to be seen.