The infinite scenery ahead, the footsteps are sonorous and powerful. Standing in 2024, the construction of Huawei's HarmonyOS operating system will usher in a "decisive moment". A few days ago, a reporter from the China Securities Journal found that despite the huge challenges and uncertainties, the success of Hongmeng has multiple favorable factors, and once the critical point is crossed, Hongmeng will realize Huawei's historic leap in the field of operating systems.
According to Huawei's plan, in the fourth quarter of this year, Huawei will launch the HarmonyOS Galaxy version of the operating system that is no longer compatible with Android, which means that the HarmonyOS will bid farewell to the early compatibility strategy and go on the road independently, so netizens call it "pure-blooded Hongmeng". "Pure-blooded Hongmeng", which means that the system only supports native applications, that is, the App needs to be "written" again, otherwise it cannot be used. This year, Huawei aims to have 5,000 apps to support Pureblood HarmonyOS, and the future goal is to have 500,000 native apps. Apple's iOS and Android apps are on the order of 2 million native apps, and there is a massive gap in front of HarmonyOS.
Xu Zhijun, Huawei's vice chairman and rotating chairman, recently raised his arms at the 2024 Huawei Analyst Conference, hoping that all developers across the country will join the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem as soon as possible, "Huawei manages 5,000 of its own applications, and the other 1 million applications are expected to be developed by the whole society." ”
Huawei's president, Ren Zhengfei, once said that it is necessary to "let those who can hear the sound of artillery call for artillery fire". Now, HarmonyOS is ushering in the "decisive moment", Huawei's call is urgent, can the market hear it? How do companies react? What is the progress of native application development? What are the chances of HarmonyOS winning in the future?
Huawei Pura70 series is equipped with HarmonyOS Photo by reporter Zhang Xingwang
HarmonyOS Native Application Cooperation and Exchange Promotion Conference and Huawei Developer Day Shenzhen Station Event Site Photo by reporter Zhang Xingwang
Shenzhen Huaqiangbei Huawei experience store sales staff to introduce mobile phone products to consumers Photo by reporter Zhang Xingwang
"Give money and give people enough" to rebuild infrastructure
The operating system is known as the soul of the computer system, and there are only a few successful cases in the market, such as Windows, Apple, and Android. The operating system technology is not difficult, the difficulty lies in the ecology, and the difficulty is in being accepted by the market.
The good news is that China Securities Journal reporters have learned from multiple interviews and surveys that based on the future prospects of the HarmonyOS industry, Alipay, Taobao, Meituan, JD.com, DingTalk, AutoNavi, Xiaohongshu and other head App application manufacturers have started the development of HarmonyOS native applications at the first time. Many manufacturers are "giving money enough to people" and working overtime to devote themselves to development.
Meituan is one of the first major Internet companies to join the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem. Wang Zhiyu, executive director of the Meituan App development project of HarmonyOS Galaxy, told China Securities Journal that in September 2023, Huawei and Meituan discussed the development of HarmonyOS native applications, and the two sides signed a contract in November 2023. According to the delivery schedule, internal testing will begin in March 2024, and public testing will be conducted in June.
Wang Zhiyu said: "The Hongmeng Galaxy version of the Meituan App was developed from scratch, and Meituan urgently selected research and development personnel in various business groups to invest in project development in November last year. ”
It is understood that Meituan completed the development of the core functions of the Harmony Galaxy version of the Meituan App in 6 weeks, and ordered the first takeaway of the Harmony Galaxy version of the Meituan App. The first HarmonyOS Galaxy version of the Meituan App covers food, hotels, medicine, food delivery, flash sales, preferred, grocery shopping and other businesses, and is currently being tested. "In the future, when users order takeaway on the HarmonyOS Galaxy Meituan App, they can check the progress and details of Meituan's takeaway orders in a timely manner through the live window, and they can see the key developments of takeaway at a glance. Wang Zhiyu said.
At the end of March this year, CNR.com was the first in the industry to complete the development of the full version of the HarmonyOS native application. All the functional modules of the CCTV App on Apple's iOS and Android, and the Hongmeng Galaxy Edition have achieved full coverage. Gong Xiaoou, head of client development of the technology center of the central radio network, told a reporter from the China Securities Journal that in August 2023, the central radio network invested 20 staff members to start the development of the HarmonyOS native application, which took nearly 7 months, and at the end of March this year, it was launched internally to test the Harmony Galaxy version of the CCTV App. The Hongmeng Galaxy version of the CCTV App has also completed the adaptation on folding screen mobile phones, tablets and other terminal devices.
Gong Xiaoou said,"Pure-blooded Hongmeng" is a new ecology,It has just started,CCTV as the national team of Internet news dissemination、China Central Radio and Television Station important new media platform,The sooner you join the Hongmeng native application ecology,The more you can seize the opportunity,Be downloaded and paid attention to by more users,Provide rich information services for more users。
According to Huawei, more and more partners have already made breakthrough innovations. Head applications such as Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, iQiyi, Himalaya, WPS Office, China Merchants Bank, and Postal Savings Bank have completed the development of the beta version of the HarmonyOS Galaxy App, and are continuing to polish the product.
WPS Office is a very basic application office software under Kingsoft Office, with a wide range of user groups, and the number of monthly active devices of WPS Office mobile version has reached 330 million by the end of 2023. Yao Dong, vice president of Kingsoft Office, told China Securities Journal: "WPS Office is the first batch of partners to join the development of HarmonyOS native applications. We attach great importance to this cooperation, and quickly set up a development team of hundreds of people, and Huawei also has on-site R&D personnel to jointly develop, adjust and optimize the WPS Office of HarmonyOS Galaxy Edition. ”
The stones of other mountains can be used to attack jade. A reporter from the China Securities Journal learned in the survey that the addition of third-party platforms has doubled the effect of the growth of Hongmeng's native application ecology. In November 2023, Ant Digital's mobile development platform mPaaS signed a cooperation agreement with Huawei. mPaaS serves hundreds of large and medium-sized customers and thousands of small and medium-sized customers in China, including large state-owned banks, joint-stock banks, leading urban rural commercial banks and other financial customers.
Qi Xiaolong, general manager of mobile technology products at Ant Digital, said: "Ant Digital's mPaaS platform has more than 2,000 partners who have developed Android apps and Apple iOS apps based on our platform. Our cooperation with Huawei will help us provide more compatible versions and improve the development efficiency of our existing customers, and on the other hand, we will be able to accelerate the promotion of HarmonyOS native applications. ”
According to Qi Xiaolong, Ant Digital's mPaaS participated in part of the code and architecture design of HarmonyOS, and on April 16, it launched the beta version of HarmonyOS native application capability set, which can ensure that customers can give full play to the performance of HarmonyOS and reduce the difficulty of accessing HarmonyOS Galaxy. Currently, about 30 institutions have entered the testing phase.
According to the reporter's understanding, third-party SDKs such as Alibaba Cloud audio and video terminal SDK (software package), AutoNavi Map SDK, and Weibo login sharing SDK have realized the adaptation of HarmonyOS Galaxy Edition, which will further reduce the development workload of partners and drive more partners to accelerate the development process of HarmonyOS native applications.
According to Huawei, the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem has achieved complete vertical industry coverage, including convenient life, travel, cultural tourism, financial management, social information, productivity tools, government affairs and people's livelihood, news media, audio-visual entertainment, games, and other leading applications are vying to accelerate the development of HarmonyOS native applications, and continue to inject new blood into the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem.
Industry insiders said that the most favorite of the operating system is that everyone comes to use, the more users, the better, the more applications, the better, which is convenient for the operating system to continue to find problems and iterations; The HarmonyOS system has received the attention of many manufacturers, and they are willing to invest real money in the development of native applications, which is the greatest support and affirmation for HarmonyOS.
"Internet of Everything" is the biggest advantage
Huawei released Harmony OS (i.e., HarmonyOS system) in 2019, which was first applied to Huawei smart screens, and began to be applied in the field of Huawei mobile phones in 2021. According to data from research institute Counterpoint, in the first quarter of 2022, HarmonyOS accounted for only 3% of the domestic mobile phone market, which increased to 8% in the fourth quarter of 2022 and increased to 16% in the fourth quarter of 2023, showing a steady upward trend. HarmonyOS will have a 4% share of the global market in the fourth quarter of 2023, making it the world's third largest mobile phone operating system after Android and Apple's iOS.
In September 2023, Huawei announced the full launch of the HarmonyOS native app, and in January 2024, Huawei said that the HarmonyOS Galaxy Edition will be released in the fourth quarter of 2024. Industry insiders believe that mobile phones are Huawei's most important terminal products, and with the return of Huawei mobile phones to the market, consumers and developers' confidence in Huawei has been restored, and it is time for Huawei to launch HarmonyOS native applications. Although HarmonyOS native apps are just getting started, their three main advantages are hugely attractive to developers.
First, Huawei has a large number of terminal devices. At present, Huawei's mobile phone king is back, and products such as tablets, PCs, smart screens, and smart cars are constantly being launched, which will increase the installed capacity of the HarmonyOS system. A HarmonyOS native app developer bluntly said that Huawei's huge number of end users is the key reason for attracting various manufacturers to develop HarmonyOS Galaxy App. "Alipay sees that China has a large number of mobile phone users, and definitely hopes that users can use the Alipay App on Huawei mobile phones. A person familiar with the matter said frankly.
According to the data, there are currently more than 800 million HarmonyOS ecological devices, of which more than 300 million are Huawei's own devices. Wang Zhiyu said: "Huawei is an important user channel for Meituan, which is an important consideration for Meituan to join the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem. ”
Second, in terms of technology, HarmonyOS has the advantages of seamless cross-terminal collaborative experience, as well as one-time development and multi-terminal deployment. Liu Shuangfeng, chief analyst of the electronics industry at China Securities Securities, believes that Google's Android system occupies a dominant position with its open-source characteristics and rich application ecology. Apple's iOS system has won the favor of a large number of users with its closed ecosystem and excellent user experience. Huawei's HarmonyOS system takes a different path, focusing on distributed capabilities. According to the reporter's understanding, Hongmeng can not only allow users to switch freely between mobile phones, tablets, computers and other devices through distributed technology, but also realize resource sharing between multiple devices, making it more convenient for users in the process of use.
In addition, Zhu Yonggang, President of Huawei Device Cloud, said: "The important feature of HarmonyOS for one-time development and multi-device deployment enables applications to achieve continuous service access in the fields of tablets, PCs, smart screens, TVs, watches, and smart vehicles in the future, and at the same time, it can also reduce developer costs, and generate new opportunities for business returns on multiple devices with just one development." ”
A number of HarmonyOS native app developers bluntly told China Securities Journal that although they encountered some technical problems in the development process of the HarmonyOS Galaxy App, they were able to communicate directly and smoothly with the Huawei team, reducing communication costs. "We asked Huawei for some needs, and the Huawei team was able to respond quickly, which is not comparable to Android and Apple's iOS. One developer said.
Third, the Hongmeng industry has a huge space. Huawei proposes a "1+8+N" (1 for mobile phones, 8 for tablets, PCs, VR devices, wearable devices, smart screens, smart audio, smart speakers, and car machines, and N for pan-IoT devices) all-scenario smart life strategy. HarmonyOS is not only a mobile phone operating system, but an operating system for the era of the Internet of Everything. According to the research report of Haitong Securities, compared with Android and Apple iOS, Hongmeng has a synchronous layout of a variety of terminal products, with a considerable market share and a huge market space in the future.
Liu Kai, an analyst at Everbright Securities, believes that after half a century of development, application software and hardware equipment have undergone earth-shaking changes, and the development of operating systems has experienced two complete era changes, the first era is the computer era dominated by Windows and Mac OS, and the second era is the smartphone era marked by Android and Apple iOS. With the continuous evolution of technology and the continuous change of device forms, the number of device connections of the Internet of Things has exceeded 10 billion units, and it has quietly become the most important component of the networked device terminal, and the era of the Internet of Things has arrived. Positioned as a next-generation operating system, HarmonyOS is expected to become a leader in the Internet of Things operating system.
On January 18, at the launching ceremony of the HarmonyOS ecosystem, Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of the Device Business, and Chairman of the Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, said that HarmonyOS will open a new blue ocean of trillion-yuan industry. Qi Xiaolong told the China Securities Journal that unlike other OS, HarmonyOS has a large number of IoT terminal devices connected to it, and the HarmonyOS industry space is huge, which is the reason for attracting Ant Digital's mPaaS platform to join the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem. "As a third-party development platform for multiple devices, we look forward to working with Huawei, Runhe Software and other partners to build an ecosystem and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results. ”
There is a light on the horizon
Having their own operating system has always been the wish of Chinese. But achieving this long-cherished wish will not be easy. This depends on the efforts of people, and more importantly, it depends on the course of the times. Each generation of operating systems can win, because they have seized the wind of the times. In the era of the Internet of Things, a new operating system should emerge.
Research firm TechInsights predicts that Android and Apple's iOS will continue to dominate the global market, and from 2024, HarmonyOS will become the second largest smartphone operating system in the Chinese market.
"Building a HarmonyOS native application ecosystem is the most critical thing for Huawei in 2024. On April 17, Xu Zhijun said that in the past, the HarmonyOS was more adaptable to various terminal devices in the south, but in the northbound applications, it still shared the Android application ecology. Huawei hopes that by 2024, 5,000 applications commonly used on smartphones in the Chinese market (99% of users' total usage time) will be fully migrated to the HarmonyOS native operating system, so as to truly unify the operating system and application ecosystem.
For the HarmonyOS system, the dawn of the sky is emerging. In April 2021, Yang Haisong, then Vice President of Huawei's AI and All-Scenario Business Dept of Huawei's Consumer Business Group, said in an interview that for an ecosystem, especially for an underlying platform such as an operating system, software usage and market share are the core factors for its survival and success, and a market share of 16% is a life-and-death line. Yang Lin, an analyst at Haitong Securities, believes that the current number of Hongmeng ecological equipment has reached more than 800 million. It is estimated that the global market share of Hongmeng has reached 13.11% so far, which is very close to the 16% life and death line.
The reporter learned in the investigation that since HarmonyOS is a new operating system, Huawei's technical support for developers is indispensable. On March 15, Zhu Yonggang said that Huawei will assist enterprises and institutions in developing more than 5,000 HarmonyOS native applications by the end of 2024, and eventually achieve the development of more than 500,000 HarmonyOS native applications. On April 7, Huawei said that from January 18 this year, Huawei announced that the first batch of more than 200 application vendors were accelerating the development of HarmonyOS native applications, and by the end of March, more than 4,000 applications had joined the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem, an increase of about 20 times in just two months.
Zhu Yonggang bluntly said that to build a HarmonyOS native application ecosystem, it is impossible to rely on the strength of Huawei alone. Ant Digital's mPaaS has completed the adaptation of HarmonyOS, which means that it will effectively accelerate the "HarmonyOS" of thousands of apps from point to area, and become one of the boosters for the development and growth of HarmonyOS native applications.
Although the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem is currently developing rapidly, there are still some challenges to face.
First of all, after the technological breakthrough, Hongmeng has a huge gap in the number of ecological applications, and it still needs to catch up. As early as May 2019, Ren Zhengfei said frankly when talking about the operating system in an interview with the media: "The operating system is not difficult in terms of technology, but the difficulty is ecology." ”
According to public information, in the global market, Apple launched the Apple App Store in 2008, and currently has nearly 2 million apps in the App Store and 2.8 million apps in the Android ecosystem. In contrast, the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem has just started, and there is a huge gap, and accelerating the development of HarmonyOS native applications is a top priority.
Second, some manufacturers are on the sidelines. An engineer from a major Internet manufacturer told a reporter from the China Securities Journal that many manufacturers are waiting to see Huawei, such as some large manufacturers are now only adding some applications to the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem. Xu Zhijun called on all application developers and app owners across the country to join the HarmonyOS native app ecosystem as soon as possible. In this way, when the Hongmeng Galaxy version is really used, it can bring consumers a good experience.
At present, Tencent's WeChat has not announced that it will join the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem. As of the end of 2023, the combined monthly active users of WeChat and WeChat were 1.343 billion. A Hongmeng native application developer bluntly said to a reporter from China Securities Journal: "WeChat has a large number of users, in fact, everyone is most concerned about when it will join the Hongmeng native application ecosystem." ”
It is rumored on the Internet that Huawei and Tencent have collapsed, but according to people familiar with the matter told a reporter from the China Securities Journal, the collapse of the talks between the two sides is false news.
A number of HarmonyOS native application developers admitted to the China Securities Journal that the development of the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem is changing with each passing day, and the sooner you join the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem, the higher the attention and greater traffic you may get. However, for an application like WeChat, it cannot be generalized, and the two parties may involve commercial interests and other factors. The HarmonyOS native application ecosystem should be expanded, and developers should also be allowed to share the industry cake.
In order to promote the HarmonyOS native application ecosystem, Huawei has launched the RMB 7 billion "Bright Star Plan" to continuously encourage ecosystem innovation such as HarmonyOS native applications, meta services, and SDKs. "When we migrated these 5,000 apps and thousands of other apps to HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS was built and truly became the world's third largest mobile operating system after Apple iOS and Google Android," Xu said. ”