China’s Huawei announced it will launch its own operating system for smartphones next week, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.

It's the company's biggest move to deal with U.S. sanctions from 2019, which banned Huawei from access to U.S.-born technology.

That included Google's Mobile Services and Android applications, which were vital to Huawei phones.

The soon-to-be launched “HarmonyOS” will be the first move into business areas that can’t be affected by sanctions.

It’s not clear if the launch will include new smartphones.

Huawei was once the world’s largest smartphone maker, but now ranks 6th globally.

HarmonyOS will only mitigate some of the impact of U.S. sanctions, which also impeded its ability to design its own chips and source from outside vendors.

In the internal memo, Huawei encouraged a more “open source” approach to development and said it will look to overseas software experts as part of the pivot.