On September 7, 2026, the HarmonyOS 7 | HUAWEI Mate XT 2 and full scene new product launch event will be held in Guangzhou. Huawei Executive Director, Director of Product Investment Review Committee, and Chairman of Terminal BG, Yu Chengdong, announced that the number of terminal devices equipped with HarmonyOS 6 and HarmonyOS 7 has exceeded 85 million. ”

From 2023, the new seeds of HarmonyOS were sown, and now, after more than a thousand days and nights. With the official release of HarmonyOS 7 and a series of new products, HarmonyOS has entered a new development cycle: HarmonyOS application experience, officially entering a new stage of maturity and usability.

Technological Long March, laying the foundation of 'root technology'

Behind the 85 million terminals is a technological long march that spans several years. One of the core leaders of this Long March is Chen Haibo, a Huawei Fellow, Chief Scientist of Huawei HarmonyOS, and Founding Chairman of the Open Source HarmonyOS Project Technical Guidance Committee. He is also the Chief Architect of HarmonyOS and the main founder of the HarmonyOS kernel.

The essence of an operating system is to serve as a "bridge" between hardware and applications. But how this bridge is built and what materials are used determines how much traffic it can carry and how fast it can run. In the 2010s, the global operating system market was monopolized by a few giants, almost entirely built on the foundation of others, from the kernel to the framework, from the toolchain to the application ecosystem. At that time, Chen Haibo had been deeply involved in the field of operating systems for many years. His research covers cutting-edge directions such as low latency operating systems and formal verification of highly trusted systems. When Huawei decided to build an operating system for the era of the Internet of Things from scratch, Chen Haibo was entrusted with a heavy responsibility. From then on, his name was embedded in every key node of the evolution of HarmonyOS technology.

Chen Haibo first established the top-level design concept for HarmonyOS, namely the "metaOS architecture", positioning HarmonyOS as a distributed, all scenario collaborative open-source operating system base for the intelligent connection of all things, and clarifying four core technical architecture features: "architecture decoupling and elastic expansion", "heterogeneous parallel, full stack collaboration", "native intelligence, scene experience", "minimalist development, multi terminal deployment". These four pillars support the underlying logic of the HarmonyOS operating system.

Starting from the kernel, HarmonyOS has taken its own technological path. Chen Haibo and his team have developed a high-performance self-developed microkernel for the Internet of Things, which achieves minimal privilege isolation, lightweight and flexible deployment through microkernel. Unlike the Linux macro kernel of traditional operating systems, HarmonyOS's self-developed microkernel architecture only retains the most basic core services such as process scheduling and thread communication in the kernel, while all other system services are run in user mode isolation. A single service crash will not affect the entire system, and it has been tested that in continuous high-intensity multitasking scenarios, the system level anomaly rate is significantly reduced.

Microkernel is the foundation, while distributed is the skeleton. The distributed native base, which upgrades the operating system from a single device system to a fully scenario interconnected system, is the root of HarmonyOS technology. Hongmeng's unique distributed soft bus technology weaves different devices into a logical super terminal through four major capabilities: public communication platform, distributed data management, distributed capability scheduling, and virtual peripherals. In an ideal environment, end-to-end communication latency is significantly reduced and transmission rates are greatly improved. Developers can develop cross terminal distributed applications just like developing the same terminal. This "one-time development, multi terminal deployment" capability allows applications to freely flow between mobile phones, tablets, computers, and car devices.

As the "chief designer" of a series of underlying technology breakthroughs, Chen Haibo and his team of scientists and engineers continue to break through file systems, security, AI native and other underlying technologies, and participate in the technical governance of the OpenHarmony open source project. They have accumulated more than ten years of underlying technology and gradually implemented it into various innovative experiences of HarmonyOS 7.

Entering the AI era, HarmonyOS's leadership is further highlighted. Compared to the passive response of traditional operating systems where users click and the system executes, HarmonyOS 7 deeply integrates AI into the underlying system, achieving a transition from "people looking for services" to "services looking for people". The capability of this all scenario intelligent operating system is built on the long-term technical accumulation of HarmonyOS's self-developed microkernel, distributed architecture, and security base. Without these 'root technologies', AI would have nowhere to take root.

Industry openness and joint construction, laying a new foundation for the industry

Advanced technology can only become the foundation of various industries by moving towards open source sharing. In September 2020, the basic capabilities of HarmonyOS were donated to the Open Atom Open Source Foundation, and OpenHarmony was officially open sourced. Huawei donated the underlying core foundation of HarmonyOS. From that moment on, HarmonyOS began to become the HarmonyOS of the entire industry.

As the founding chairman of the OpenHarmony project group technical steering committee, Chen Haibo and his team have begun to promote the governance and evolution of the open source community, which is a much more complex task than writing code. Chen Haibo believes that one of the goals of Open Source HarmonyOS is to connect various consumer terminals and industry terminals, allowing smartphones, tablets, computers, smart cars, smart robots, and intelligent terminals in various industries to "speak Mandarin" with each other.

After many years, OpenHarmony has delivered a remarkable performance: the total number of devices in the open-source HarmonyOS ecosystem has exceeded 1.35 billion, the code scale has exceeded 140 million lines, 13808 contributors and 644 community partners have gathered, and over 2040 products have passed compatibility evaluations. Open source HarmonyOS has become one of the fastest-growing root communities for intelligent terminal operating systems, and the power of industry collaboration continues to be unleashed. Thousands of ecosystem partners and developers such as Tencent, ByteDance, Alibaba, etc. have worked together to make the HarmonyOS ecosystem take shape, and small seeds have borne fruitful fruits.

In August 2026, the HarmonyOS Ecological Conference was held in Shenzhen, and the Global Intelligent Internet of Things Alliance (GIIC) officially released the "Hongtu Plan". This plan is initiated by the GIIC Alliance and fully supported by Huawei, bringing together chips, modules OSV、 Equipment manufacturers and other industry chain forces empower the industry through various measures such as development incentives, evaluation incentives, and commercial incentives. HarmonyOS is moving from consumer terminals to various industries such as finance, industry, and aerospace, and from "ecological co construction" to "large-scale development".

Chen Haibo pointed out that ecological interconnectivity is the only way to have vitality, and open source should be based in China and face the world. The vitality of an operating system comes not only from the technology itself, but also from the joint construction of the industry. From independent technology research and development, to open-source development of underlying capabilities, and to joint construction with industry partners, HarmonyOS is becoming the industrial foundation of Digital China.

Continuous release of innovation capability, technology returning to user experience

The endpoint of technological breakthroughs is never the submission records in the laboratory or code repository, but the real experience of ordinary users.

Under the joint construction of ecology, Hongmeng Ecological is flourishing, bringing users a mature and useful ecological experience. At present, the HarmonyOS app market has access to over 400000 applications and services, covering 18 vertical fields such as convenient living, travel and tourism, financial management, social information, audio-visual entertainment, gaming, and corporate office. WeChat has iterated over 200 versions in 500 days, and Tiktok has completed 28 functions plus 400 optimization updates.

More importantly, more and more developers are shifting from "adaptation migration" to "deep co construction", bringing useful innovative features. Hongmeng version of Alipay innovates the payment experience. When using smart payment, the system will automatically recognize and pop up the payment code when the mobile phone is close to the merchant's code scanning device, without manually unlocking and opening the app; The smart grip of the HarmonyOS version of WeChat intelligently recognizes whether the user is holding the phone with their left or right hand, and dynamically moves the answer button for WeChat calls to the most comfortable position of the user's thumb; The HarmonyOS version of JD.com brings an immersive 3D shopping experience, presenting 1:1 scale 3D product models in real space through camera scanning of the environment.At present, the innovation capabilities contributed by ecological partners have exceeded 160, which have been integrated and called upon by over 1600 applications.

In the latest release of HarmonyOS 7, HarmonyOS has brought better performance in spatial aesthetics, intelligence, performance, security, and connectivity. In terms of smoothness, based on the deep optimization of the Ark engine, the overall performance of HarmonyOS 7 has improved by 15% compared to the previous generation, and the battery life has been extended by more than 36 minutes. The smoothness of high-frequency applications has been improved by 22% compared to the previous generation, the response speed of cross application jumps has been increased by 25%, and the retention rate of key applications has been increased by 34%; In terms of intelligence, Xiaoyi has undergone a qualitative change from a "voice assistant" to a "system level intelligent agent". In complex tasks such as cross end collaboration, system control, and travel booking, Xiaoyi can achieve autonomous execution. In terms of privacy and security, HarmonyOS 7 has upgraded its HarmonyOS Star Shield security technology. The system has six anti fraud capabilities, supporting the identification of fraudulent phone calls, AI voice changes, web scams, overseas transfer scams, and other scams. The risk detection rate exceeds 90%, and it can identify the top 7 types of fraud scenarios such as false wealth management and fake base stations, blocking the vast majority of risks before they occur.

85 million terminals, 400000 applications, and 11 million developers - these numbers are the best footnotes for HarmonyOS to go from 'usable' to 'easy to use'. But behind the numbers, there are countless scientists and engineers who have started over and over again on microkernel architecture, code submissions from OpenHarmony community contributors, and the transformation of ecosystem partners from adaptation to deep co construction.

The construction of Hongmeng Ecology is a marathon without an end. From the debut of HarmonyOS in 2019, to sowing new seeds in 2023, and finally to the official release of HarmonyOS 7 in 2026, the HarmonyOS application experience has officially entered a mature and user-friendly stage. In seven years, an operating system has gone from nothing to something, from something to something, from technology to industrial foundation. As an operating system of the new era, HarmonyOS was born in the era of the Internet of Things, grew up in the wave of AI explosion, and became a result of the joint participation of millions of developers and billions of users. Its technological roadmap is self-developed, its ecosystem is open, and its future belongs to everyone who uses it.