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Produced by | Zhuyi Finance

In 2019, at the Huawei Developer Conference, the HarmonyOS operating system was officially introduced.

However, to Huawei's surprise, this operating system, which poured in tremendous time, effort, funds, and human resources, did not receive widespread recognition from netizens upon its initial debut.

Some netizens believed that HarmonyOS still had similarities in architecture with the Android system and had not achieved complete independent innovation outside of the Android ecosystem. Especially when some netizens analyzed the HarmonyOS code, they found that the HarmonyOS code still contained the word "Android" in multiple places, leading them to believe that HarmonyOS was not entirely independently developed but a modified product of "Android wrapper".

In response to these doubts, Huawei officials and Yu Chengdong himself have clarified and explained in strong terms, but these explanations have not convinced the majority of netizens - even based on Yu Chengdong's previous explanation that HarmonyOS's early compatibility with Android apps was to maximize the connection with the app ecosystem, these doubts still considered this approach not entirely independent innovation.

Yu Chengdong explained that the early version of HarmonyOS was a single system platform that did not yet have a large application ecosystem to support it, so choosing compatibility with Android was to ensure that users would not be affected by a lack of applications during actual use.

However, both Huawei officials and Yu Chengdong pointed out that once the timing was ripe, HarmonyOS would remove all Android code and achieve a pure-blooded version of HarmonyOS.

But this "ripe timing" has spanned from the launch of HarmonyOS in 2019 to the 2024 milestone.

At the recently held "OpenHarmony Developer Conference 2024," Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, Chairman of the Terminal BG, and Chairman of the Intelligent Vehicle Solutions BU, introduced HarmonyOS at the conference, stating that HarmonyOS NEXT has over 4000 native applications and is ready to launch a pure-blooded version.

Subsequently, Xu Zhijun, Deputy Chairman and Rotating Chairman of Huawei, gave a clearer answer to the specific launch date of the pure-blooded HarmonyOS - in an interview with the media, Xu Zhijun said, "We expect to bring the pure-blooded HarmonyOS to market when the Mate 70 is sold this year, which is our goal."

The nearly definitive statements of the two Huawei executives also mean that the launch date of the pure-blooded HarmonyOS is almost certain - the day when the Mate70 series phones are released this year.

At that time, whether HarmonyOS is a "wrapper for Android" will also be revealed simultaneously.

However, now there is no need to wait until the Mate70 is released to verify whether HarmonyOS is a "wrapper for Android" because a research institution has already completed certification, confirming that the HarmonyOS kernel is 100% independently developed.

This research institution is called the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), which in its latest certification results, confirmed that Huawei's HarmonyOS kernel belongs to 100% independent research and development. This conclusion means that a third-party authoritative institution recognizes HarmonyOS kernel's 100% independent research and development.

According to the certification document issued by CAICT, the academy has currently completed the independent maturity level certification for the HarmonyOS kernel of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. This certification not only considers the HarmonyOS kernel's independent research and development ratio at 100% but also shows that the HarmonyOS kernel's independent maturity level is A-level.

CAICT is a scientific research institution directly under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, with a scientific research business system combining soft science research and hard power platforms. It is the only industrial innovation platform in China's ICT field that can connect all links from new technology research, standard development, experimental verification, testing and certification to industrial promotion. Therefore, the authority of Huawei's HarmonyOS certification by CAICT is undoubted.

With CAICT's official certification, the identity of the HarmonyOS operating system now undoubtedly has official endorsement, which undoubtedly adds more authority to the future development of HarmonyOS.

At the same time, for most "haters" of HarmonyOS, this certification from CAICT also means that many Huawei haters will now be silenced.

More importantly, the release of this certification result also means that the long-standing rumor that HarmonyOS is a "wrapper for Android" will now be discredited.

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