Huawei steals spotlight at ChinaJoy expo as HarmonyOS Next promotion entices gamers
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Its HarmonyOS promotion marked Shenzhen-based Huawei’s first year with a central booth at the ChinaJoy exhibition floor inside the Shanghai New International Expo Centre.
03:04
Can Huawei’s Harmony OS for smartphones compete with Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS?
Can Huawei’s Harmony OS for smartphones compete with Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS?
Long queues formed at four separate sections exhibiting those featured titles at the HarmonyOS booth, as ChinaJoy attendees waited to take part in interactive activities, get free gifts and play video games on Huawei’s latest smartphones.
“It was exciting to see one of my favourite games Narake: Bladepoint Mobile and be able to run it on the new [mobile operating] system,” said Xu Xiaoyi, a 25-year-old Shanghai resident, who joined the queue for Huawei after initially setting out to see NetEase’s booth.
Xu said he hoped to see more foreign titles supported on HarmonyOS Next in the future, as ChinaJoy – with 369,000 total visitors this year, according to the event’s organiser – witnessed growing interest in the mobile platform’s launch and the native apps created for the system.
Huawei’s campaign at ChinaJoy showed how the company is building up anticipation for HarmonyOS Next, after the platform’s current iteration unseated Apple’s iOS as the second-biggest mobile operating system on the mainland in the first quarter.
People gather at the booth of Japanese gaming console giant PlayStation, owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment, at the recent ChinaJoy expo in Shanghai. Photo: AFP
HarmonyOS was launched as an alternative to Android in August 2019, three months after the US government added Huawei to its Entity List. Under this trade blacklist, Huawei is barred from buying software, chips and other US-origin technologies from suppliers without Washington’s approval.
While some major Chinese video gaming studios, such as miHoYo and Perfect World, did not return as exhibitors this year, Sony Interactive Entertainment once again put on a major display at the event, where its PlayStation gaming console and a wide range of titles saw plenty of interest. Visitors had the opportunity to play more than 30 games, including yet-to-be-released titles, on the popular PS5.
Sony is the only one among the industry’s big-three game console vendors that continues to exhibit at ChinaJoy. Microsoft and Nintendo have been absent from the expo for years.
“This was my first year here, and I got here early … to get the very first batch of gifts including Valorant,” said Qiao Ni, a 19-year-old Shanghai gamer, who was keen to visit the booths of foreign studios. He expects to return to ChinaJoy next year.
