Xiaomi and vivo have successively announced their self-developed operating system, what is their intention?

Tech 2023-10-19 16:30:34 Source: Network

[Article/Observer Network Lv Dong]This morning (October 17th), Xiaomi Group Chairman Lei Jun posted on Weibo that the official version of Xiaomi's brand new operating system - XiaomiHyperOS (XiaomiHyperOS) has been packaged, and the first Xiaomi 14 series phone equipped with this system has been delivered to the factory and officially started production.From this moment on, Xiaomi's surging OS will gradually take over from MIUI, "Lei Jun wrote

[Article/Observer Network Lv Dong]

This morning (October 17th), Xiaomi Group Chairman Lei Jun posted on Weibo that the official version of Xiaomi's brand new operating system - XiaomiHyperOS (XiaomiHyperOS) has been packaged, and the first Xiaomi 14 series phone equipped with this system has been delivered to the factory and officially started production.

From this moment on, Xiaomi's surging OS will gradually take over from MIUI, "Lei Jun wrote." Today is a historic moment for Xiaomi

These statements also serve as a solid example of Xiaomi's self-developed operating system, which has been widely used by NetEase. Affected by this, Xiaomi's stock price closed up nearly 4% today.

Coincidentally, a recent message from vivo to Observer shows that the company will hold a vivo developer conference on November 1st. At the meeting, the company will not only release its self-developed AI big model and original system OriginOS4, but also release its self-developed operating system.

Intensive official promotion of self-developed operating systems, what are the intentions of these mobile phone manufacturers?

Try to hold onto the basic disk as much as possible

Zhong Xiaolei, a research analyst at Canalys, a market research firm, pointed out in an interview with Observer Network that mobile phone manufacturers develop their own systems mainly to strengthen the ecological interconnection between devices. On the other hand, Huawei's recent return to mobile phones has shown a strong momentum, coupled with the launch of close range wireless connection technologies such as Star Flash, which has strong ecological integration capabilities. Manufacturers such as Xiaomi and Vivo also want to bring differentiated selling points through their self-developed systems, and try to maintain their basic market as much as possible.

For Xiaomi, in the current context of weak overall demand and stock competition in the mobile phone market, two strategies may need to be adopted. One is to bet on the second growth curve of cars and other products, and the second is to maintain the current user base. With the launch of new phones by Apple and Huawei, it may take away some of Xiaomi's user base. Xiaomi is now launching a self-developed operating system, which can release signals of self-developed capabilities to the outside world and increase user retention Save Zhong Xiaolei said.

In fact, Lei Jun also provided an official interpretation of the purpose of the self-developed system. He mentioned that in the era of the Internet of Things, the complexity and large number of operating system branches involved in various devices, as well as the ecological connectivity barriers caused by different systems and protocols, exceeded many people's imagination. Xiaomi not only has smartphones, but also a huge smart ecosystem spanning over 200 categories. Xiaomi Pengpai OS was born to achieve a closed-loop of "people, cars, and homes".

Lei Jun, Chairman of Xiaomi Group

Anyone who focuses on consumer electronics knows that most mobile phone manufacturers' operating systems now, such as Xiaomi's MIUI, vivo's OriginOS, OPPO's ColorOS, Honor's MagicOS, and Huawei's previous EMUI, are all based on secondary development of Android systems. After Huawei self-developed the Hongmeng system, Xiaomi OV and others were also categorized as the "Android camp".

As vivo has not yet disclosed more details of its self-developed system, the market has temporarily focused its attention on the high-profile Xiaomi. Compared to the previous MIUI, what are the differences between Xiaomi's self-developed Pengpai OS?

Lei Jun revealed that Xiaomi began exploratory development and verification of its self-developed operating system when its IoT business began to take shape in 2014. In 2017, the research and development of a new system officially began. Today, Xiaomi's self-developed surging OS is based on the integration of deeply evolved Android and Xiaomi's self-developed Vela system, "completely rewriting the underlying architecture, providing a public foundation for the future billions of devices and billions of connections for the Internet of Things.

This can't help but remind people of Huawei Hongmeng's positioning as the "operating system of the era of Internet of Things".

Zhong Xiaolei analyzed and pointed out to Observer Network that Xiaomi Pengpai OS has retained the bottom frame of Android, which is easy to understand, in order to be compatible with and adapt to Android applications, and maintain users' basic disk. On top of this, Xiaomi added its self-developed Vela system to be responsible for the interconnection between IoT devices, which is similar to Huawei's initial self-developed Hongmeng route. However, it remains to be seen whether Xiaomi can replace Android AOSP code like Hongmeng in the future, as Xiaomi is still in its early stages.

Two months ago, Huawei launched the HarmonyOSNEXT developer preview version at its own developer conference. At that time, in the eyes of a group of technology media, this was the "pure" Hongmeng system because its system base was fully self-developed, eliminating traditional AOSP code, and only supporting the application of Hongmeng kernel and Hongmeng system.

Subsequently, at the end of September, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's terminal business, announced at a press conference that the Hongmeng native application was fully launched, and the HarmonyOSNEXT developer preview version would be open to developers in the first quarter of 2024. He also revealed at the time that after the release of HarmonyOS4, there were over 60 million upgraded users in over a month.

But like self-developed chips, the difficulty of breaking the inherent pattern in self-developed operating systems cannot be underestimated.

Taking Huawei's self-developed Hongmeng as an example, although it has made rapid progress since its release in 2019, there is still a considerable distance to truly "divide the world" with Android and iOS. According to data released by market research firm Counterpoint, in the first quarter of this year, the share of Hongmeng System in the Chinese market increased to 8%, while iOS's share was 20% and Android's share was 72%; In the global market, Hongmeng's share is 2%, with the latter two having a share of 20% and 78%, respectively.

Many giants have tried to develop their own operating systems, including Microsoft, BlackBerry, and feature machine king Nokia. They have all developed their own operating systems, but we have found that if operating systems want to survive, the bottom line of market share is 16%, which is a dead line. As early as 2020, Yang Haisong, then Vice President of Huawei's Consumer Business Software Department, admitted.

Based on current data, Hongmeng is still on the way to cross the 'life and death line'.

As of the first quarter of 2023, the Chinese market share of the three major operating systems

Fragmentation pattern is unlikely

What is the difficulty of building a self-developed operating system?

Zhong Xiaolei pointed out to Observer Network that the most difficult task is still software adaptation and ecological construction. Taking Huawei as an example, previously Huawei phones used the Android system, and the ecosystem was also built based on the Android system. Now, after self-developed the Hongmeng system, it is necessary to create an independent software system based on Hongmeng. In addition, the operating system has strong technical barriers, and currently there are strong players in the market such as Android, iOS, and Hongmeng. It is also crucial for latecomers such as Xiaomi and Vivo to continue to invest resources in competition.

In his view, the collaboration between hardware and software is equally important for ecological construction, and Huawei has already found a way out in this regard. For example, Huawei phones have self-developed Kirin SoC, and Star Flash is paired with Kirin A2 chips. Companies such as Xiaomi and Vivo have also been investing in self-developed chips for a period of time, such as Xiaomi's launch of the surging SoC, and Vivo's own imaging chip V-series. Whether these manufacturers' chips can form a system like Huawei in the future is also crucial for the construction of the ecosystem.

Apart from Xiaomi and vivo, other mainstream manufacturers such as Honor and OPPO have not yet officially announced their self-developed systems. But it is undeniable that they also want to make a difference in the field of operating systems, as the system is the core of improving user experience.

Recently, Honor CEO Zhao Ming stated in an interview with Observer Network that MagicOS7.0 has built four fundamental capabilities: platform level AI, MagicRing, MagicGuard, and TurboX. Honor hopes that MagicOS can share the world with iOS and Hongmeng in the future. He also revealed that Honor is preparing MagicOS8.0, which will take a big step forward in the end-to-end large model and future full scene multi device fusion experience based on 7.0.

Observer Network noticed that in early September, a digital blogger revealed that MagicOS8.0 is a self-developed micro kernel developed by Honor itself, and is a low-level pure self-developed mobile operating system. The main optimization directions include enhancing smoothness, reducing power consumption, low code, multi terminal integration, privacy and security, etc.

But as of now, Honor has not yet released the specific details of MagicOS8.0.

As a leader in the domestic mobile phone market in the past two years, OPPO released its self-developed smart cross end system "Pantanal" in 2022. It should be pointed out that "Pantanal" is positioned as a "middleware" between the operating system and the application, with the goal of breaking the limitations between devices and systems, rather than the commonly referred to operating system. For mobile phone manufacturers, the threshold for accessing middleware is lower and there is no need to replace existing operating systems. However, this also reflects OPPO's accumulation of self-developed products to some extent.

As of the first quarter of 2023, the global market share of the three major operating systems

Looking forward to the future, is it possible for multiple players to coexist in the operating system field as mobile phone manufacturers enter the market?

Zhong Xiaolei believes that this is unlikely.

He told Observer Network that the mobile phone industry has undergone a wave of reshuffle, with the Matthew effect prominent and the stronger the stronger. In history, the mobile operating systems that once appeared, including Symbian, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone, all faded out of the market six or seven years ago due to scale effects and ecological issues. Although Huawei is currently committed to building a self-developed software system, the focus is still on compatibility with Android. So relying solely on self-developed operating systems, it is difficult to form a fragmented software landscape among multiple vendors such as iOS, Android, Hongmeng, and Xiaomi.

But the latecomers are not without the possibility of success. For Apple, iOS is also a system built on its own. Although the current iPhone is often criticized for its lack of innovation, there is no denying that the hardware and software system of A series chips+iOS is still a strong moat for Apple. Are there any experiences that can be learned from iOS in the development process of future domestic operating systems?

Zhong Xiaolei pointed out to Observer Network that in terms of system functionality alone, the latest versions of MIUI such as Hongmeng and Xiaomi are not significantly different from iOS, and it can even be said that Hongmeng does better in terms of connectivity than iOS. But the key to the problem is still the developer or software ecosystem. In their daily experience, users will find that iOS has fewer pop-up ads, and the frequency is relatively higher on Android and even Hongmeng systems. Therefore, the biggest problem is how to improve the user experience and enhance the unity between ecosystems.

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