Who Owns HarmonyOS?

Huawei began research into its own operating system as early as 2012, with internal R&D intensifying around 2015. The project existed as a contingency plan, described by Huawei executive Richard Yu as a "plan B" in case the company lost access to Android. That contingency became reality in May 2019 when the US Department of Commerce placed Huawei on the Entity List, cutting off access to Google Mobile Services on future devices.

Huawei officially unveiled HarmonyOS, then known internally as Hongmeng, at the Huawei Developer Conference on August 9, 2019. The name Hongmeng comes from Chinese mythology, meaning "vast mist," representing the vitality of all things at creation. The English name HarmonyOS was chosen to symbolize interconnection and harmonious coexistence. The first commercial product to run HarmonyOS was the Honor Vision smart TV, released in August 2019.

HarmonyOS 1.0 used a mixed framework with both a LiteOS kernel and a Linux kernel, plus an AOSP compatibility layer that allowed Android applications to run. This dual-framework approach let Huawei maintain app compatibility while building its own platform. The first two years of HarmonyOS were limited to smart TVs, routers, and IoT devices.

HarmonyOS 2.0, released on June 2, 2021, was the first version to run on smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches. Huawei began migrating its existing phone lineup to HarmonyOS 2.0 in China, reaching over 100 million upgrades by late 2021. The AOSP compatibility layer remained, so Android apps continued to work.

HarmonyOS 3.0 shipped in 2022, and HarmonyOS 4.0 in 2023, both retaining the AOSP compatibility layer. The major break came with HarmonyOS NEXT, announced at the Huawei Developer Conference in August 2023. HarmonyOS NEXT removed the AOSP framework entirely. It cannot run Android applications. It uses Huawei's own Ark Compiler and native APIs. Huawei dubbed it "pure blood" HarmonyOS in Chinese media.

HarmonyOS 5, also known as HarmonyOS NEXT 5, was officially launched on October 22, 2024. The first device to ship with it was the Huawei Mate 70, released in November 2024. At launch, the platform had approximately 15,000 native applications and services. By June 2026, at the Huawei Developer Conference, Huawei reported that HarmonyOS had over 400,000 apps and services available, with more than 11 million registered developers.

HarmonyOS 6 was released on November 25, 2025. HarmonyOS 7 was unveiled at HDC 2026 on June 12, 2026, with a developer beta released the same day. HarmonyOS 7 introduced a spatial design language, an AI-driven architecture with the Celia assistant as a system-level intelligence hub, and the HarmonyOS Intelligent Agent Framework 2.0. Huawei claimed the agent framework achieves over 90% task completion rates for complex requests.

By March 2026, more than 55 million smartphones ran HarmonyOS, according to China's vice-minister of industry and information technology. The "pure blood" HarmonyOS device base grew from 23 million in November 2025 to 51 million by early 2026, doubling in four months.