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The company aims to convert a million apps for Harmony OS, with over 4,000 already transitioned. Xu highlighted Harmony OS’s IoT-inspired architecture, designed to unify diverse devices under a single system.

At the 21st Huawei Analyst Summit, Huawei’s rotating chairman, Eric Xu, invited developers to work on the creation of native apps for the company’s mobile operating system, Harmony OS. “We call on all app developers and owners in China to join our Harmony OS-native app ecosystem as soon as possible, and work together to deliver a better experience to consumers,” Xu stated in a press release.

Harmony OS is the company’s next-generation operating system, which can run on a variety of smart devices, including smartphones, wearables, tablet computers, and smart TVs. By the end of 2023, Harmony OS had been installed on over 800 million devices.

According to Counterpoint Research, Harmony OS captured 4% of the worldwide market share and surpassed 16% in China in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Huawei has made significant progress in establishing the Harmony OS ecosystem, with more than 4,000 of the intended 5,000 apps already being converted to the new operating system. According to Xu, the company’s goal is to have up to a million apps set for its ecosystem.

Xu explained that Harmony OS has a new architecture. This IoT-inspired operating system was built from the outset to handle a wide range of devices, including IoT and mobile devices, as well as home, laptop, and desktop computers. A single system for all devices.

“In the past, we focused primarily on adapting Harmony OS for a wide range of devices. However, for apps, they were still operating within the Android environment,” Xu stated. “In the Chinese market, Huawei smartphone users spend 99% of their time using approximately 5,000 apps. So, in order to properly integrate the OS and the app ecosystem, we opted to transfer these apps to Harmony OS first in 2024,” stated Xu.

“In the past, we focused primarily on adapting Harmony OS for a wide range of devices. However, for apps, they were still operating within the Android environment,” Xu stated. “In the Chinese market, Huawei smartphone users spend 99% of their time using approximately 5,000 apps. So, in order to properly integrate the OS and the app ecosystem, we opted to transfer these apps to Harmony OS first in 2024,” stated Xu.

Huawei has already invested considerably in developing expertise for the Harmony OS ecosystem. Harmony OS certification has been gained by over 380,000 developers, and there are more than 150 industry-university partnership programs using Harmony OS. More than 135 institutions in China hosted Harmony OS classes in 2023, according to the company’s 2023 Annual Report, which was made public at the end of March.

In August 2023, Huawei’s HongMeng (Harmony) Kernel was awarded the industry’s first Evaluation Assurance Level 6 Augmented (EAL6+) certificate as part of Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (CC), the highest security level available in the field of general-purpose operating system (OS) kernels, making Huawei the world’s first smart device manufacturer to receive certification in this domain.

Xu recognizes that expanding out the Harmony OS ecosystem is a difficult endeavor. “As you may know, developing Harmony OS was not previously part of our strategy,” he added. “Regardless, now that we have taken on this task, we will strive to do it well.”