Huawei wants to expand its HarmonyOS mobile platform outside of China

In 2019, Huawei introduced its own platform, HarmonyOS, as a result of the ban on the use of Android services. Now the company intends to launch this platform globally.

According to The Register, Huawei is planning to expand HarmonyOS internationally and will spend 2024 developing the platform and filling it with all the necessary and popular applications.

“We will work hard to build the HarmonyOS app ecosystem first in the Chinese market, and then, from country to country, we will gradually start to promote it to other parts of the world,” said Huawei CEO Eric Xu.

He also said that the company’s smartphone owners spend 99% of their time with the device in only about 5 thousand apps. Therefore, in 2024, the company will port these apps to HarmonyOS. Xu also noted that porting 4,000 apps is already underway.

In the future, the company will also encourage more developers of both old and new apps to port them to HarmonyOS. According to Xu, they need broad support from both the industry and developers.

Eric Xu also believes that HarmonyOS could become the third major operating system for mobile devices after Android and iOS, and that the number of apps on the platform could reach 1 million.

“We will work hard to build up the HarmonyOS app ecosystem in the China market first, then, from country to country, we will start gradually pushing it out to other parts of the world,” he said.

In this way, Huawei wants to regain its share of the global market after years of sanctions and restrictions, which began with a ban on the use of Google’s Android services in 2019 and further restrictions on the use of technology and a ban on sales in the United States.

One of the company’s latest flagship smartphones, the Mate 60 Pro, was equipped with the most advanced chip that China could produce, but U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo criticized the chip, saying it was years behind the chips used by Americans.