Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's Consumer Business Group, unveils the HarmonyOS, or Hongmeng in Chinese, during the Huawei Developer Conference held in Dongguan, south China's Guangdong Province, Aug. 9, 2019. Photo: Xinhua

If the US continues to block Huawei and other Chinese mobile phone firms from using Google's ecosystem, Huawei's self-developed HarmonyOS can be sold globally, and gradually an ecosystem will come into being, replacing Google's system, a Huawei senior executive has said.

Huawei has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing its ecosystem HarmonyOS, which can now reach 70-80 percent of the performance features of AndroidOS, and the system is improving nearly each day, said Richard Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer businesses, according to domestic news site finace.sina.com.

During the Huawei Developer Conference 2020, which will be held from Thursday to Saturday, the company is expected to announce that it will use HarmonyOS in its mobile phones.

"Since May 16, 2019, major chips and technologies from the US have not been available (to Huawei). But we have prepared for nearly 10 years to develop our own chips, software and supplies, so the first round of US sanctions was not a crisis for Huawei," Yu said, although the sanctions have had a greater impact on Huawei's consumer businesses since Google's ecosystem can't be used in overseas markets. 

On August 17 this year, the US tightened its restriction so that no one can sell chips made with US technology to Huawei.

"This has caused a huge crisis for us. We are working day and night to solve the problem… we can still hold on for a while, but it is indeed a difficult period when your own designed good chips cannot be produced, and other people's chips cannot be sold to us," Yu said.

According toTaiwan-based DigiTimes, which cited industry sources, Huawei will reduce shipments of the flagship Mate40 phone,  which is expected to be Huawei's last smartphone to carry Kirin 9000 chips.

But Yu remains optimistic, saying "the status quo does not represent the future. In 5G, we are now far ahead. We are ahead of Ericsson by more than one and a half years, and Ericsson is ahead of Nokia by five years."

"Our only mistake is that we were born in China," Yu said.

Global Times