China's southern tech hub of Shenzhen is making a concerted push to boost the use of operating systems developed by Huawei Technologies, as the country continues seeking to cut its reliance on foreign technologies.
Shenzhen will try to attract companies and talent to the city to build an industry around HarmonyOS and EulerOS, two operating systems developed by the telecoms equipment giant based in the city, the local Industry and Information Technology Bureau said in an action plan published on Friday.
The city wants to eliminate reliance on foreign tech in key operating systems by 2025, and help HarmonyOS and EulerOS become world-leading software, according to the plan.
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The municipal government also wants by that same year to have more than 10 industries and at least 100 companies that have adopted the operating systems.
As part of the effort, Shenzhen will encourage government bodies and state-owned enterprises to use the systems in fields including water supply, transportat and education, according to the action plan. It also encourages the manufacturing, internet, finance, energy and healthcare industries to use products with those systems installed.
The plan does not specify how companies will be encouraged to adopt these systems.
HarmonyOS, a mobile and Internet-of-Things OS that also uses some Android code, was unveiled in 2019 after Washington sanctioned Huawei and Google stopped offering its suite of mobile software services to the company.
EulerOS, a Linux distribution designed for enterprise servers, was first released in 2021.
Shenzhen's goal is to have more than 40 per cent of the city's new operators of "critical information infrastructure" - systems considered important to national security - using EulerOS by 2025, according to the plan. It also specifies that HarmonyOS should take "an important seat" in China's smart device ecosystem.
Huawei has faced an uphill battle in popularising its operating systems, but it is slowly making headway as the country accelerates a push to wean itself off foreign tech amid escalating US export and investment restrictions.
The mobile device market share for HarmonyOS in China grew to 8 per cent in the first quarter this year from 1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to a May report from research firm Counterpoint.