Huawei Telecommunications Co. will begin offering smartphones that will be able to run its self-designed operating system next year as it aims to keep its mobile market running without Google Android and other U.S. suppliers.
Huawei rushed to build U.S.-origin technologies out of its mobile products and networking devices following a series of sanctions by Trump's government, restricting its access to American components or chips designed with U.S. technology.
Restrictions have ensured that Huawei 's famous smartphones can't be sold with Google's app suite, restricting shipments of its products to markets outside of China.
Despite the constraints, in the second quarter, Huawei rose to the top of the global mobile market, pushing Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. to the top spot. The popularity came from large shipments in China, where customers are used to making use of alternatives to Google apps. Overseas, its revenues have dried up.
The organization has built its own android app platform to replace Google Mobile Services, a product kit that includes the Play App Store, Google Maps and other common applications. Huawei 's security kit is called Huawei Network Services.
Richard Yu, head of Huawei's consumer-electronics group, said Thursday that the company would go a step forward by offering smartphones running its self-developed operating system, dubbed "Harmony OS." Huawei first unveiled the operating system last year, but is currently running on Huawei 's line of other smart devices.
Mr. Yu said that the beta version of Harmony OS for smartphones will be made available to software developers in China by the end of the year. He spoke at Huawei 's annual developers conference at Dongguan Basketball Arena in Southern China.
Mr. Yu said that the operating system will finally be made available to other smartphone vendors as well — probably a nod to Chinese handset vendors such as Oppo , Vivo or Xiaomi Corp., whose smartphones are all running on Android.
In addition to its supremacy of smartphones, Huawei is the world's largest producer of telecommunications equipment and pioneer of 5 G technology. U.S. officials say the company 's hardware could be used by Beijing to spy — accusations refuted by the firm and Beijing — and encourage allies to withdraw the firm as a 5 G network equipment provider.
The U.S. last year. Commerce Department put Huawei on a blacklist, prohibiting businesses from selling U.S.-origin technologies without a warrant. The U.S. further increased the controls this year by banning the selling of all chips made to Huawei using U.S. technologies, robbing it of essential components for manufacturing phones and other devices. Huawei has enough chip inventories to last until the beginning of 2021, according to Gartner research firm forecasts.
If Huawei struggles to ensure adequate shipping of smartphones next year, then the Harmony OS for smartphones, which is expected to hit end-users next year, can only hit a small number of customers, said Mo Jia, an analyst at Canalys.
That would make it a theoretical breakthrough rather than a realistic game change, he said.
Mr. Yu said that the company's new Mate 40 smartphone would be the last Huawei system to be fitted with the Kirin chips flagship. Huawei is seen as a global pioneer in chip design, but the US constraints have stifled its access to specialized chip manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
The full extent of the new regulations depends , in part, on whether the Commerce Department issues licenses to chip firms to continue selling Huawei components.
Taiwanese chip designer MediaTek Inc. said it had applied to the department seeking a license to continue selling chips to Huawei.
