On Friday (Jun 21), Huawei Technologies announced significant advancements in various fields, including operating systems and artificial intelligence at Huawei Developer Conference (HDC) 2024. The company claimed that it had achieved in 10 years what took the United States and Europe 30 years to accomplish.
Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, made these remarks at the start of a three-day developer conference in Dongguan, located in southern China. He highlighted that Huawei’s Harmony operating system is now installed on over 900 million devices. “Harmony has made major breakthroughs. In 10 years, we’ve achieved what our European and American counterparts took over 30 years to do in terms of developing the core technology of an independent operating system,” Yu stated.
Huawei launched HarmonyOS in 2019 in response to US technology restrictions that prevented the company from accessing Google support for the Android operating system used in its smartphones.
Yu also mentioned that Huawei’s Ascend artificial intelligence infrastructure, which is the most powerful AI infrastructure developed by a Chinese company, is now the second most popular globally, following Nvidia, the market leader in AI chips.
Yu pointed out that for a long time, operating systems and other software have been dominated by Europe and the United States. However, the advent of the Internet of Things has provided Huawei with an opportunity to surpass them. Since the launch of the Mate 60 last year, equipped with an improved China-made chip, Huawei’s smartphone business has experienced a resurgence. Yu noted that sales of Harmony-equipped smartphones have increased by 68 percent in the first five months of the year.
According to research firm Counterpoint, in the first quarter of 2024, Huawei’s HarmonyOS overtook Apple’s iOS to become the second best-selling mobile operating system in China, with a 17 percent market share, trailing only behind Android.
