China’s Electric Appliance Giant Gree to Introduce Huawei’s HarmonyOS
According to Zdnet News, Dong Mingzhu, Chairwoman of Gree Electric, is bent on introducing Huawei’s HarmonyOS.
Gree Group produces air conditioners, water heaters, refrigerators, household appliances and smartphones. Data from Huatai Securities Research Institute shows that Gree ranked first in China’s household air-conditioning market with a share of 36.9% last year. Gree also ranked 7th in the number of patents registered last year among Chinese enterprises, indicating its strong technical strength.
As much as Gree dominates the air conditioning market, it remains weak when it comes to smartphones. Dong Mingzhu also openly stated she would not give up on the phone business, saying, “Our phones can have calls even in Tibet. And we can develop customized features to meet the needs of any given institution.”
It has been a month since Huawei released the Harmony OS 2. Huawei has donated the HarmonyOS core structure package and all the basic capabilities related to code to the OpenAtom Foundation. The other fellow companies can utilize the open source code and modify it according to their will.
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Within the Harmony OS ecosystem, home appliance enterprises are the most active. Many home appliance brands announced their participation in the Harmony OS camp and developed home appliance systems adopting Harmony OS.
Midea is reported to be the first home appliance brand equipped with HarmonyOS. According to the company’s records, as of May 2021, Midea launched 17 categories and 74 products with Harmony OS just within one year. Haier, Jiuyang, Meizu, BAIC, JD.com, Suning and iFlytek have also announced theiy are joining the Harmony OS family.
Wang Chenglu, president of the software department at Huawei’s consumer business group, said in June that the number of devices equipped with the Harmony OS will increase from 300 million to 400 million by the end of 2021.
It is widely believed that Gree’s use of the HarmonyOS is of great significance to the Chinese home appliance market. Previously, Meizu, a Chinese smartphone company, also said it would use HarmonyOS in its smart home products.
