HarmonyOS Next applications has reached 20,000 and 10 billion connected devices on Huawei ecosystem
The goal for 2025 is to develop 100,000 applications, thus strengthening the Huawei ecosystem
Huawei aims to return to the top position in China's smartphone market in 2025. In a letter to employees, Yu Chengdong, Huawei's chief executive, announced that after five years of sanctions, the company has resumed rapid growth with an outstanding performance in the mobile phone market. The Pura70 surpassed one million units sold, and the Mate XT won the innovation award from "Time". Yu also highlighted the importance of the HarmonyOS ecosystem, which has reached 20,000 applications and 10 billion connected devices. The goal for 2025 is to develop 100,000 applications, thus strengthening the Huawei ecosystem.
Huawei, pure-blooded Hongmeng, has one of the three points in the world
The allusion to the Battle of Chibi must be familiar to the family members of the IT family.
As a classic battle in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", this battle laid the foundation for the establishment of the Three Kingdoms, burning Chibi and dividing the world.
In today's machine world, there is also one area that presents a three-dimensional situation - the operating system. Apple's iOS, Google's Android, and Huawei's Hongmeng are like Wei Shuwu.
And just today (January 13), Huawei's Yu Chengdong released the first all-staff letter of the new year, and when talking about Hongmeng, he just mentioned "three points of the world".
Regarding Yu Chengdong's letter and the situation of pure-blooded Hongmeng, the editor will talk to you specifically.
01. Hongmeng has one of the three points in the world
In the all-staff letter, Yu Chengdong mentioned the "three-point world" about Hongmeng in two places.
The first is that he said that in 2024, the HarmonyOS ecosystem will usher in a historic breakthrough, with the official release of HarmonyOS NEXT (5.0) in ten years, 20,000+ HarmonyOS native applications and meta services on the shelves, more than 7.2 million HarmonyOS developers, and more than 1 billion ecological devices.
HarmonyOS NEXT, a full-stack self-developed system from the inside out, realizes the autonomy, controllability, security, and reliability of the core operating system technologies, breaking the polar pattern of mobile operating systems, and providing the world with a third choice.
This phrase "providing the world with a third option" is to show that the pattern of the two great powers of iOS and Android has been rewritten, and a third pole has emerged.
The second place he said is very straightforward: the torrent of the times is rushing into the world, and Hongmeng has one of the three parts of the world, which is the responsibility and mission entrusted by history to our generation of terminal people.
The sentence "HarmonyOS has one of the three parts of the world" is undoubtedly expressing that HarmonyOS has become the world's third largest mobile operating system, and iOS and Android are three-legged.
Looking back over the past decade, iOS and Android have teamed up to dominate the mobile operating system space.
During this period, it was not that there was no third system, but none of them were able to break the polar pattern.
For example, Windows Phone, which is very familiar to family friends, has given many users hope of breaking the game, but due to a series of mysterious operations by Microsoft, it ended in failure.
As for the original Hongmeng, as China's first mobile operating system, although it is still in the development stage, it can already see the dawn of victory.
On the one hand, as mentioned by IT Home Jiayou, Huawei's user base is sufficient, and its user retention in Greater China is high.
On the other hand, consumer support and software developers are actively adapting and embracing the HarmonyOS ecosystem.
02. Ecological maturity is the key
At the Native HarmonyOS Night held on October 22, 2024, Huawei officially released the native HarmonyOS NEXT (5.0).
As a brand-new operating system, life is one thing, life is another, and if you want to survive, you need a perfect system and a mature ecology as the foundation.
After the release of the native HarmonyOS 5.0, Huawei has pushed several new versions of the upgrade package.
Take the latest version 5.0.0.123, which adds features such as App Lock, USB connection to a PC to transfer files and pictures, and more.
With continuous updates in the future, the system functions of Hongmeng will gradually become more perfect.
However, it is much more difficult to build a mature ecosystem than to improve the system, the former is controlled by Huawei itself, and the latter requires the joint efforts of multiple parties.
Although the HarmonyOS ecosystem is in full swing, and many software have been put on the shelves of the HarmonyOS native version, it is far from maturity, after all, the new system has a new technical framework, and software development needs to be rewritten.
Taking WeChat as an example, on January 9, the WeChat pure-blooded Hongmeng Edition officially landed on the mobile phone HUAWEI AppGallery, and has supported major functions including basic communication, social networking, WeChat payment, official account, mini program, video account, live broadcast and so on.
After the official version of WeChat was launched, Tencent WXG (WeChat Business Group) employee @客村小蒋 published a long article summarizing the journey.
According to him, the native HarmonyOS is a completely new technical framework, and the programming language is the unique ArkTS language, which means that all apps have to be completely rewritten.
And Tencent's "Goose Factory Blackboard Newspaper" also posted an article about the development process of the WeChat Hongmeng version: This product itself requires the R&D team to type it out one key at a time, from the kernel, to the architecture, to the internal test, to the public beta, and then to round after round of debug, to complete the 14-year road of WeChat in less than a year.
It can be seen that it is not easy for software developers to adapt, and the birth of the native HarmonyOS application requires a time-consuming and laborious process.
This also directly reflects the difficulty of building an ecosystem, after all, it is not one or a few applications that make up an ecosystem, but hundreds of thousands or even millions.
Including Yu Chengdong bluntly said in the all-staff letter that in 2025, the Hongmeng ecosystem will be strongly invested, and 100,000 applications are a sign of ecological maturity, which is the key goal in the next six months to a year.
03. 2025, the critical year
Regarding the immaturity of the HarmonyOS ecosystem, Xu Zhijun once called on more consumers to accept, tolerate and help improve it in his speech.
He said that the operating system and ecology are used, and the more people use it, the faster it matures. Only when more and more consumers accept and use HarmonyOS can the experience of systems and applications be quickly iteratively improved, and the HarmonyOS ecosystem can move towards a positive cycle.
However, there is a very real problem in front of us, and there are not many mobile phones that support upgrading pure-blooded Hongmeng.
As of now, the models in open beta are: Mate 60/70 / X5 / X6, Pura 70, Pocket 2, nova 12 Ultra.
The limited number of supported models means that the number of users is small, so the HarmonyOS system and ecosystem cannot be used on a large scale, and the maturity will slow down.
Fortunately, in 2025, this is expected to change.
Huawei has made it clear that this year, mobile phones, tablets, and new wearable products will be equipped with native HarmonyOS by default, and more and more old products will gradually complete the native HarmonyOS upgrade.
In fact, at the Huawei Mate brand ceremony on November 26 last year, Yu Chengdong announced that all new mobile phones and all tablets launched in 2025 will be equipped with native Hongmeng.
If the new machine has a built-in pure-blood HarmonyOS in the factory, and the old machine can be upgraded to a pure-blood HarmonyOS as soon as possible, then more people will use the new system.
Only when it is accepted and used by more people, coupled with the active adaptation of major software developers, can the system and ecology of pure-blooded Hongmeng mature more quickly.
04. Three-legged
In a tweet from our IT home last year, the editor described the pure-blooded Hongmeng as "the rock on the road of Huawei's new Long March".
At that time, Cui Jian's song was used to tell the system and ecological difficulties faced by pure-blooded Hongmeng as a new independent and autonomous system.
And today, combined with the "three points of the world" in Yu Chengdong's letter, it can't help but be reminiscent of the Battle of Chibi, where iOS, Android, and Hongmeng form a three-legged trend.
Although the data for the full year of 2024 has not yet been released, according to data previously released by Counterpoint Research, in the first quarter of 2024, HarmonyOS surpassed iOS for the first time in the Chinese market and jumped to the second largest operating system in China.
In addition, TechInsights has released a forecast report that HarmonyOS will overtake iOS as the second largest smartphone operating system in China in 2024.
In short, Chibi has been burned, but for Huawei and Hongmeng, there are more tough battles to be fought in the future.