Hardware Failure, Software Hole Filling: Where Has Huawei Mobile Ecology Come?

There is no pause key in Huawei's dictionary. With the tightening of control in the United States, Huawei's pace is getting faster and faster.

On September 10, at the second Huawei developer conference, Huawei launched a series of releases, including Hongmeng OS 2.0, emui 11, HMS, Huawei hilink and Huawei research, all focusing on software, application and ecology.

After the U.S. ban was imposed on May 16 last year, Google stopped cooperating with Huawei, and Huawei opened a difficult road to explore mobile ecology. In addition to Huawei's board of directors, Huawei Hongmeng will officially launch the OS 2.0 version of Huawei's mobile phone in the next year's board of directors.

It is worth noting that Hongmeng OS 2.0 has supported three-party devices. Wang Chenglu, President of the software department of Huawei's consumer business, said that this is a key step for Huawei to empower the three-party ecology. The company will open source to hardware manufacturers in the South and develop to application manufacturers in the north to make innovation. Midea and Jiuyang will soon release home appliances equipped with Hongmeng OS. He also said frankly: "ecology involves a wide range of fields, and it is very difficult to establish it. However, only when the roots of ecology are rooted and we unite, will the future flourish. Today, Huawei has taken a key step to build confidence for its partners."

There is still a long way to go for software, and Huawei's consumer business is bearing the brunt of the current hardware outage. As one of the ways to deal with it, Huawei's internal de "a" has been in progress. Wang Chenglu told reporters in an interview after the meeting that the localization rate of the P40 flagship machine released by Huawei in the first half of this year has reached 86%, while the mate 30 released in the second half of last year is only less than 30%.

In the first half of 2020, Huawei's mobile phones, watches, laptops and other hardware all achieved high growth. Yu Chengdong said: "in 2019, Huawei began to build a full scene ecology. On the one hand, the hardware ecology continued to be established. After the sanction on May 16 last year, Huawei began to make efforts to apply the ecology. Now Huawei wants to create a full scene, and the hardware and software are driven by two wheels."

Software "hole filling"

In August this year, the U.S. issued another ban. If it is strictly considered, the supply to Huawei based on US technology or software will be subject to U.S. control, which directly affects the acquisition of core chips such as Huawei's processors. Combined with the previous ban in May, September 15 will be the effective date for the suspension of supply.

In an interview with 21st century economic reporter after the meeting, Wang Yanmin, President of global ecological development department of Huawei's consumer business, said bluntly: "in fact, there is no so-called cut-off date, so the pressure will always exist. In terms of the goal of ecological construction, breaking the existing pattern is the primary task. "

This time, Huawei has started a new business in ecology. It has developed a series of "software products" including operating system and platform, mainly aiming at overseas mobile phone market. Judging from today's conference, Hongmeng OS will also be installed in domestic hardware. It should be pointed out that when Huawei has both operating system and hardware equipment, cooperative equipment manufacturers may have concerns.

What are the features of the latest Hongmeng OS 2.0, HMS 5.0 and emui 11? First of all, Hongmeng OS 2.0 upgrades the distributed capabilities such as distributed soft bus, distributed data management, and distributed security. At the same time, Huawei also released an adaptive UX framework. Moreover, Hongmeng OS will be officially open-source, and developers will get simulators, SDK packages and IDE tools. By the end of 2020, Hongmeng OS beta version for smart phones will be released to domestic developers.

Since January 2022, Huawei will open its 4gmb open source devices to China's open-source devices, such as 128MB, which will be open to China's open-source devices such as Hongmeng's 128MB open-source devices in October 2022

In one year, HMS core 5.0's open capability has increased from 14 kits to 56 kits, and the number of APIs has jumped from 885 to 12981, covering seven major fields. Among them, CG kit has brought better graphics and image quality; kit has met the positioning accuracy requirements from meter level, sub meter level to centimeter level in different scenes through super GNSS urban canyon positioning and VPS visual positioning technology.

With the support of 1.8 million developers around the world, HMS (Huawei mobile service) ecosystem has ushered in rapid growth: more than 96000 applications integrate HMS core, and the number of active users of appgallery worldwide reaches 490 million. From January to August 2020, appgallery's application distribution reaches 261 billion, and the world's third largest mobile application ecosystem has emerged.

The newly released emui 11 is equipped with the core distributed technology of Hongmeng OS, which is no longer limited to the interaction between mobile phones, but also can realize the interaction with IOT devices running Hongmeng OS, such as the mobile phone calling the large screen camera for smooth video call, the mobile phone and the intelligent home device equipped with Hongmeng OS can be connected by touching without feeling, and the household appliances will change from "no screen" to "screen".

Although there has been a lot of progress, the ecological road is still a long way to go, because Google's Android is not only a system, but also an order. This platform has many developers and is a global platform ecology. It is not easy to establish ecology and break through monopoly. Hongmeng OS needs time to grow and cultivate more developers.

Wang Chenglu said: "we received a lot of feedback after the release of 1.0 last year, but it's not only technology that is so simple that we really want to create an ecosystem and make an operating system. If there is no programming framework, if there is no compiler, if there is no tool, we are not an ecosystem at all. These core components together constitute the system software and ecology. If we have these roots, we can grow amazing applications based on this root, and our ecology can succeed. In such a special historical period, Hongmeng has taken the first step. "

Wang Yanmin also told reporters: "the challenges of ecological construction are multifaceted. How to make consumers accept and use our platform and applications in a short period of time, and how to make head applications cooperate with us, there is also a big problem is that some low-frequency and just needed products in some subdivision fields need to be gnawed at."

Facing chip "off supply": steady growth

For Huawei, the construction of software and ecology is only one of the difficulties. The most difficult thing for both sides is how to fight on both sides.

On August 7, Yu Chengdong said at an event: "Huawei will launch mate 40 with Kirin 9000 chip this fall. Kirin 9000 may be our last generation of high-end Huawei Kirin chips."

The topic of chip cut-off has come to the surface again, causing ripples at the sales end of the industrial chain. Recently, when a reporter from the 21st century economic report visited Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen, the sales of a mobile phone store told the reporter that Huawei's mobile phones are in short supply, and the store is mainly selling inventory, mainly because of Kirin chips. In terms of price, the prices of operators' stores and Huawei's Direct stores are stable, but some dealers have increased their prices by hundreds of yuan.

Another mobile phone owner in a third tier city described a similar situation to the reporter: "Huawei's price hike has been quite fierce recently. Some models have even increased their prices by 10%. Sometimes, there are even two or three small price adjustments a day. In addition, it is difficult to get the goods now. Some retail stores can't get the goods, and some mobile phones will be short of color and can't take all of them. If Huawei gets the goods on the same day, it can basically be sold on the same day, which also leads to more shortage of supply. "

On the other hand, in the open market of mobile phones, the competition is even more intense. Due to the impact of chip supply interruption, Huawei's overseas market share will inevitably be eroded, and the domestic market will also face fierce competition from other brands.

According to Gartner data, Huawei still ranked second in the second quarter of this year, with a total of 54.12 million mobile phones sold, accounting for 18.4% of the market share, and Apple's sales of about 38.39 million, accounting for 13%.

However, in the European market, some brands have been stuck rapidly. According to counterpoint data, in the second quarter of this year, Chinese manufacturers accounted for 35% of the market share in Europe. Oppo and Xiaomi increased by 41% and 55% respectively year-on-year, filling the gap caused by Huawei's sales decline.

Even so, Huawei continued to rise against the trend in the domestic market, with Yu Chengdong saying that under pressure, Huawei still sold 105m mobile phones in the first half of the year.

In addition to the impact of mobile phone processor, recently, memory, panel and other components will also face power failure. According to South Korean media reports, Samsung and SK Hynix will stop selling parts to China, and the two companies will suspend trading on September 15. Not long ago, Meguiar, which is also a big memory manufacturer, also said that it could not supply parts from September 15. Samsung and LG will also stop supplying high-end smart phone panels to China, the report said.

LG's panel supply to Huawei is not large, so the impact is relatively limited. However, Cui Jilong, general manager of Beijing Dixian, told the 21st century economic report: "Samsung has a high proportion in AMOLED (Huawei), and it still accounts for about 70% in 2019. This year, BOE's proportion will certainly increase a lot, but the overall capacity is still limited. After all, more than 80% of AMOLED in the world are SDC (Samsung display company)."

In terms of memory chips, in the second quarter of 2020, Samsung, SK Hynix and micron accounted for 54.9%, accounting for half of the total market share. Zhongda (20.44%) and SINOSTAR (3.94%) accounted for the market share of Samsung (3.94%) and HGC.

The position of these three enterprises in the storage field can be seen, but according to the reporter's understanding, Intel can continue to supply Huawei. Judging from the progress of domestic storage plants, it is still in the catch-up stage. A number of analysts pointed out to the reporter of 21st century economic report that the most important thing is that Huawei's processor has been facing power failure, and the impact and pressure brought by the outage of memory is the second. Huawei will also have inventory to support product production, but if it hoards too much memory, it may have some negative effects on Huawei's own performance and market supply and demand.