What just happened? Following many months of rumors and speculation, Huawei has just officially revealed what could potentially be an Android replacement for its smartphones. At its annual developer conference in China, the company lifted the lid on 'Harmony OS.'

We'd heard reports that Huawei was working on its own operating system, previously known as Hongmeng, even before the Trump administration added the company to an Entity list back in May, which prevents US organizations doing business with the Chinese firm without a license from the Commerce Department.

Huawei filed trademarks for Hongmeng in June, though it muddied the waters when an exec later said the OS wasn't designed for smartphones. Earlier this week, however, it was reported that the company had been testing a smartphone running its in-house operating system, and that a reveal was on its way.

True to that report, Huawei has just shown off what is now called HarmonyOS. The open-source platform bears several similarities to Google's upcoming Fuchsia, in that both are microkernel-based and designed to work across a number of devices, including tablets, IoT devices, smartwatches, computers, smartphones, and more.

Huawei talked about some of Harmony's features, claiming that its IPC performance was five times that of Fuchsia. It added that it uses a deterministic latency engine that provides "precise resource scheduling with real-time load analysis and forecasting and app characteristics matching." There's also a big focus on security, with the OS having a verified TEE (Trusted Execution Environment), keeping data secure across multiple smart devices.

Harmony will support apps built for HTML5, Linux, and Android, and it is set to launch on "smart screen products"---expected to be smart TVs---later this year before arriving on wearables and laptops across the next three years. Huawei said it will only be used in its smartphones if it is no longer allowed to use Android. With the Trump administration reportedly putting Huawei licenses on hold, that scenario is looking more likely by the day.