(Yicai) Nov. 13 -- Many Chinese internet companies have job openings for operating system developers after Huawei Technologies said it will start using a native HarmonyOS app ecosystem no longer compatible with Android.

Top internet firms, including NetEase, Meituan, and Toutiao, have started looking for engineers on recruitment sites. Meituan is offering CNY40,000 to CNY60,000 (USD 5,562 to USD8,342) a month for HarmonyOS infrastructure engineers, while Alibaba Group’s workplace communication and collaboration platform DingTalk is offering a monthly wage of CNY15,000 to CNY30,000 for HarmonyOS development engineers, according to data from Momo.

The number of devices that have upgraded to HarmonyOS 4, which aims at unifying the OS used in smartphones, televisions, and cars, exceeds 100 million, Huawei said last month.

Huawei will start to use a native HarmonyOS app ecosystem, Richard Yu, chief executive of its consumer business group and chairman of the intelligent automotive solutions business unit, said at the end of September. The Shenzhen-based firm will open the developer review version of HarmonyOS Next to developers in the first quarter of next year, he added.

More and more firms are developing apps for Huawei's OS after HarmonyOS 4 was released, Wu Feng, deputy general manager of Fuzhou Chuanyi Zhuoyue Vocational Skills Training School, told Yicai. There will likely be a shortage of technical talent in the short term, driving up salaries for related jobs, Wu added.

Most companies hiring for HarmonyOS-related positions this year are in the internet, computer software, and value-added service fields, data from online recruiter Zhaopin showed. They have high requirements of applicants' educational background and work experience, offering an average CNY17,537 a month, higher than the market median.

"Some programmers have got a salary rise of 30 to 50 percent recently after they began working on HarmonyOS-related development," Wu noted. “The average wage in the field will normalize as more programmers change their jobs to HarmonyOS development because this change does not present great technical challenges.”

Many internet app platforms have announced plans to develop applications supporting HarmonyOS. Online travel agency LY.Com will start developing a native app for Huawei's OS, planning to complete a core version by the end of this year, with users able to book all of the firm's products, including hotels, vacations, and air, train and bus tickets, it said this month. 

“Our existing app is not compatible with HarmonyOS, but we have begun developing an app for it," the product manager of an online services company said.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev