Huawei is downplaying the idea that its homegrown Hongmeng operating system could serve as a drop-in replacement for Google’s Android on its smartphones

The company says its Hongmeng operating system is not for smartphones and the company intends to continue to use Google's Android operating system for its smartphones.

The statement was made on Thursday by Huawei board member and senior Vice President Catherine Chen, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

The Hongmeng system has previously been widely reported in the media as a potential alternative to Android on smartphones, but Chen, when asked at a media roundtable in Brussels, said that the OS was not designed for smartphones.

She said the recently-trademarked Hongmeng is meant for industrial use and that the OS had been in development long before the current discussions related to finding an Android alternative.

Chen said while an operating system for smartphones usually contain dozens of millions of lines of codes, Hongmeng contains much fewer, and therefore it is very secure. The Hongmeng system also has extreme low latency compared with a smartphone operating system, she added.