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

Huawei's Russian research and development (R&D) team said it will join the development of Huawei's Harmony operating system and apps based on it, according to media reports. 

Huawei's Russian R&D team has around 1,500 staff located in cities including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Novosibirsk. The Russian team said that Huawei has been in close contact with development partners to help its research product become more compatible with Huawei's mobile ecosystem. 

The HarmonyOS 2.0 was announced by Huawei on Friday, and the beta version of the system is planned to be launched in December this year, and will be installed on Huawei smartphones in 2021. 

Although the development of HarmonyOS is widely seen as Huawei's response to increasing pressure from the US government, the company has not yet entirely given up on the Android system. 

The US has been racked up attacks that could cut Huawei from accessing Google's Android updates and security patches. Some of Huawei's smart phones don't have pre-installed Google services such as Google Map and Google Play.

The company is also currently facing extensive ban on the company's US supply and a threat of being cut off from the global supply chain. The ban on microchips supply to Huawei from a range of chipmakers that use US equipment began to take effect on Tuesday.