The HarmonyOS platform, created by Huawei to overcome the United States trade bloc, is reviving the market in China and the company is studying its international expansion.

Donald Trump’s administration announced a blockade of Huawei in 2019 as part of an escalation of the trade war against China that has not yet been resolved. The White House argued (without evidence) on the grounds of “espionage” and under the oft-repeated argument of “national security” prevented US companies from buying telecommunications equipment from Huawei and also banned them from accessing technology from US companies.

These restrictions prevented the company from accessing advanced hardware such as Qualcomm chips and software from all of Google’s Android services. In a short time the blockade (also followed by other European countries) They ended Huawei as one of the world’s top three mobile phone manufacturers. The Asian giant had to move quickly and created HarmonyOS, a microkernel-based and Open Source distributed operating system based on Android

Huawei reinvents itself with HarmonyOS

Huawei is experiencing a revival in the Chinese market. The latest figures from research firm Counterpoint say smartphones with HarmonyOS have reached a 15.5% share of the Chinese market, very close to Apple’s iOS (15.7%), which it will overtake in the coming quarters, will remain as the second platform, surpassed only by the elusive Android. This year, analysts expect Huawei to regain the number one spot in sales that Vivo holds today.

However, Huawei has a plan that should eventually put HarmonyOS in position competing iOS and Android on the global stageas the company’s rotating president, Erik Xu, explained:

“In the Chinese market, Huawei smartphone users spend 99 percent of their time with about 5,000 apps. That’s why we’ve decided to dedicate 2024 to first migrating these apps to HarmonyOS in our effort to truly unify the operating system and app ecosystem. We are also encouraging other apps to move to HarmonyOS.”.

Xu said Huawei is in the process of porting the first 4,000 apps while talking to the developers of the remaining thousands. Once this core group is complete and thousands of other apps are added, HarmonyOS will be ready to go outside of China. However, there is much doubt as to whether there will be a market for HarmonyOS devices outside of China: Repeated sanctions and negative publicity from the governments of the United States and European countries have left the brand with a mountain to climb in both the business and consumer worlds.

The challenge is huge. Huawei says it has a “wide industry support”, but it remains to be proven. In addition to political issues and commercial constraints, creating a relevant mobile platform to compete with iOS and Android is a huge challenge that even global giants like Microsoft have failed to achieve.