The Chinese arm of McDonald’s – with a network of more than 5,500 restaurants and over 200,000 employees serving more than 1 billion customers each year – is part of the first batch of multinational food companies on the mainland that have committed to develop native apps on HarmonyOS, according to a statement by the US fast-food chain on Wednesday.
HarmonyOS Next, the new version of Huawei’s mobile operating platform, will enable McDonald’s customers to order meals by accessing its applications from various devices including smartphones, tablets and smart cars, the Chicago, Illinois-based company said.
The next iteration of Huawei Technologies’ self-developed mobile operating system, HarmonyOS Next, will remove support for Android-based apps on all of the Chinese firm’s devices installed with the new platform. Photo: Shutterstock.
After that transaction, McDonald’s ownership in its China unit increased from 20 per cent to 48 per cent. A consortium led by state-backed conglomerate Citic has a controlling stake of 52 per cent.
The cooperation with Huawei has also come at a time when McDonald’s, which is targeting 50,000 restaurants worldwide by 2027, signed a strategic partnership with Alphabet’s Google Cloud to apply generative artificial intelligence (AI) solutions across its restaurants worldwide. Google’s AI solutions, however, are not available on the mainland.
Huawei’s deal with McDonald’s China builds on the momentum that HarmonyOS has gained from a growing number of mainland Big Tech companies.
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?
Huawei is expected to launch a developer preview version of HarmonyOS Next in the first quarter of 2024.
China’s Big Tech firms seek HarmonyOS app builders as Huawei severs Android ties
More than 700 million devices currently run on HarmonyOS, with more than 2.2 million third-party developers creating apps for the platform, according to Richard Yu Chengdong, chief executive of Huawei’s consumer business group and chairman of its Intelligent Automotive Solution business unit, at the company’s annual developer conference in August.
Denial of responsibility! Chronicles Live is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials, please contact us by email – chronicleslive.com. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.
