Huawei plans to introduce its HarmonyOS Next to its upcoming devices in 2025. However, there’s a catch: it will only cover the company’s releases in China.
Huawei unveiled HarmonyOS Next weeks ago, giving us a glimpse of its new creation. The OS is promising and could challenge other OS giants, including Android and iOS. However, that is still in the distant future, as Huawei’s expansion plan for the OS will remain exclusive to China.
Huawei plans to use HarmonyOS Next for all its upcoming devices in China next year. The company’s devices offered globally, on the other hand, will remain employing HarmonyOS 4.3, which has the Android AOSP kernel.
According to SCMP, the reason behind this is the number of apps compatible with the OS. The company is reportedly facing a challenge in encouraging developers to create apps that can be used in HarmonyOS Next due to the little profit they can get and the cost of maintaining them. Without the apps that users usually use, Huawei will have a hard time promoting its HarmonyOS Next devices. Moreover, using the HarmonyOS Next outside China will also be a challenge for users, especially when they need to use apps that are not available on their OS.
Weeks ago, Huawei’s Richard Yu confirmed that there were already 15,000 apps and services under HarmonyOS, noting that the number would grow. However, this number is still far from the usual number of apps offered in Android and iOS, which both offer all the most-used apps by their users globally.
Recently, a report revealed that Huawei’s HarmonyOS gained a 15% OS share during the third quarter of the year in China. The Chinese smartphone maker’s OS share jumped from 13% to 15% in Q3 of 2024. This put it on the same level as iOS, which also had a 15% share in China during Q3 and the same quarter last year. It also cannibalized some share portions of Android, which used to own 72% from a year ago. Despite this, HarmonyOS is still an underdog in its own country and has an unnoticeable presence in the global OS race. With this, promoting a new OS version, which is basically still incapable of challenging competitors, will be a huge challenge for Huawei.
