Earlier this year, Huawei found itself in some strife after companies, including Google and ARM, cut the company off after the business found itself added to the US Department of Commerce"s "entity list". The move essentially barred Huawei from being able to purchase from US companies without first gaining federal approval, which led to reported smartphone production stoppages.
While the situation was eventually ironed out at the end of June, there were earlier claims that Huawei had been working on its own operating system as it "[didn"t] want to be on the crutch of Android". Believed to be called "Hongmeng OS" or possibly "Ark OS", the company filed trademark applications for the former in a number of countries. Now, it seems that there could have been significant progress with the development of this operating system.
According to a report from Global Times, a state-run news outlet in China, smart TVs as part of the Honor lineup featuring Hongmeng OS will be released into the market on August 10. It appears that the operating system was originally intended for the IoT segment and industrial implementations but may soon appear on smartphones, the first of which could be priced at around the ¥2,000 price bracket (roughly $288).
The source also went on to say that:
"The new Huawei phones with the HongMeng system will debut in the market in the fourth quarter, with up to several million units in stock. It is expected that the smartphone will show up along with the Huawei Mate30 series."
Of course, the above should be taken with a grain of salt but, with less than half of 2019 left to go, it"ll be interesting to see what may end up materializing if the story ends up holding true.