Huawei has registered the trademark ‘Harmony’ in Europe as the name for its own forthcoming mobile operating system. The name was registered on 12 July with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), as well as the UK’s Intellectual Property Office. This is according to Dutch tech site LetsGoDigital.
The filing comes a month after Huawei filed the name HongMeng in Europe – the name it is likely to give the operating system in China.
Huawei claims that Harmony will not only offer better performance than Google Android but also provide the operating system for a range of devices, including wearables, laptops and desktop computers. It ought to be available by the end of the year in China, with a global launch to follow in the first quarter of 2020.
At the same time, though, the company has indicated that Harmony remains a fall-back position should its dispute with the US government continue or worsen.
Indeed, the operating system may not even be launched if the US relents on its threat of sanctions against Huawei over allegations that its networking hardware can be used by China’s intelligence services to eavesdrop on communications.
The filing comes as Huawei is reportedly planning to make large-scale redundancies in the US in response to a crash in sales, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The redundancies will include research and development staff at the company’s Futurewei Technologies subsidiaries across the US. The job losses are expected to number in the hundreds, with some staff already informed, while some Chinese employees in the US have been offered the option of returning to China. However, Huawei has not yet commented on the claims.
Both the operating system and the redundancies come after the administration of President Trump put Huawei on its ‘Entity List’, a blacklist of organisations that US companies – or companies with operations in the US – need to seek a prior licence before supplying.
The move effectively cut off Huawei from key elements of its supply chain, disrupting the production of everything from smartphones to telecoms equipment. The move even affects the licensing of operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows and Android.
