Huawei's developer conference /Photo via Huawei

Chinese telecom giant Huawei officially revealed its homegrown operating system (OS) "Harmony," previously known as HongmengOS, at an annual developer conference on Friday in Dongguan, south China's Guangdong Province.

Before introducing HarmonyOS, Huawei CEO Richard Yu, explained the company's thought process behind the new OS, saying people in the future will require a seamless intelligent experience across all devices and scenarios.

The new OS featuring low latency and high security is designed to meet those needs, supporting all future Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the company said. It will first be used in wearable devices, smart screens, in-vehicle systems and smart speakers.

Yu said Huawei is facing troubling times due to the Trump administration's move to impose sanctions. 

"But Huawei still achieved a 24% year-on-year growth in the first half," Yu said, adding that without the sanctions, Huawei's smartphone shipment would likely be the world's largest in that period.

Sanctions don't stop the company preparing for the future. Yu said the new OS is completely different from Android and iOS. The microkernel-based distributed architecture enables itself to be deployed across multiple devices with different hardware and platforms.