HarmonyOS development enters a new phase: advancing from application building to capability orchestration

In the past few years, external discussions about HarmonyOS have long focused on one question: can Huawei truly rebuild an independent and mature operating system ecosystem?

But as we enter 2026, this question is changing.

At the recently concluded Huawei Developer Conference (HDC 2026), Huawei revealed a set of latest data: HarmonyOS terminal devices have surpassed 66 million, available apps and meta-services exceed 400,000, registered developers are over 11 million, and open source HarmonyOS ecosystem devices are over 1.3 billion.

In other words, after just three years—through migration of native applications, developer recruitment, and ecosystem building—HarmonyOS is gradually moving from the stage of "is it usable" to "is it easy to use".

The AI wave has changed the rules of competition. The focus of HarmonyOS's next stage is no longer just the number of applications, but the formation of a new generation of intelligent service systems centered around "Xiaoyi".

In the newly released HarmonyOS 7, Huawei’s terminal AI assistant Xiaoyi has evolved into a system-level Agent, further moving toward the goal of "intent equals service".

WallstreetCN has learned from Huawei terminal insiders that Xiaoyi currently invokes services through three main technical paths: A2A (Agent to Agent), directly calling Agents on the Xiaoyi open platform, and invoking Skill capability services.

After Agent becomes industry consensus, Huawei is facing a new competitive proposition: rewriting the underlying system is just the beginning, the real determinant of success is whether the ecosystem is sufficiently rich and whether services can truly be called.

In the past few years, HarmonyOS’s main focus was on whether it could be a replacement; now, it is starting to seriously answer the question of "why use it".

The Application Ecosystem Completes the First Stage Task

Looking back on HarmonyOS’s development path, clear stage changes can be seen.

In recent years, HarmonyOS’s most practical issue was not innovation, but ecosystem catchup.

After "splitting" from Android, HarmonyOS first had to answer: can users’ daily needs still be met?

Thus, in the past three years, HarmonyOS’s construction focus has revolved more around app numbers, developer scale, and basic experience.

Huawei rotating chairman Xu Zhijun once pointed out that developing an advanced operating system isn’t that difficult, but whether there are a lot of apps and devices using the OS is crucial. If no one uses it, no matter how advanced, an OS has no value; the key to success is whether a rich app ecosystem can be established.

According to Huawei’s analysis, 100,000 apps is the benchmark for HarmonyOS’s ecosystem to meet consumer demands, which is its key goal for 2025.

A year ago, HarmonyOS native apps and meta-services numbered just over 30,000; now that number has reached 400,000. Leading apps like WeChat, Douyin, Alipay, Meituan, WeCom, and DingTalk have deeply adapted to HarmonyOS, with mid-to-long-tail apps continually joining.

It is clear that more lightweight meta-services have become an important supplement to the HarmonyOS application ecosystem.

Wang Kang of QuestMobile Industry Research Institute said that as Huawei’s quick apps based on HarmonyOS, meta-services provide the market with a brand-new application service form, and give developers and platforms new directions to break the fixed mobile internet traffic market.

To further lower the bar for developers, HarmonyOS is also strengthening AI-assisted development capabilities.

At this developer conference, Huawei released development assistant tools—DevEco Code / DevEco CLI—and multi-AI Agent collaborative development aids, connecting the full process from requirements design, development, validation, testing, to operation and maintenance.

WallstreetCN also noted at the conference that Huawei offers the ability to "generate a meta-service in one sentence".

Judged against standards of the mobile internet era, HarmonyOS has completed the most difficult stage of building an independent ecosystem.

But new challenges have emerged. As AI enters the system layer, mere application numbers are no longer sufficient as a barrier. Users are no longer satisfied with simply opening apps—they expect the system to proactively complete tasks.

Operating system competition is entering a new cycle.

Thus, the most watched aspect of this Huawei developer conference is no longer whether the application numbers continue to grow, but the upgrade of HarmonyOS intelligence.

At the developer conference, Huawei announced full Agent integration of HarmonyOS, a comprehensive evolution of HarmonyOS intelligence towards an Agent architecture, the release of HarmonyOS Intelligent Framework 2.0, upgrade of Xiaoyi to a system-level Agent, and the proposal of "intent equals service".

This means the system is shifting from "managing applications" to "scheduling capabilities".

Traditional operating systems open apps and switch windows; AIOS needs to understand user intent and automatically invoke different services to complete tasks.

Under HarmonyOS Intelligent Framework 2.0, Xiaoyi’s working ability is significantly enhanced. For example, when a user requests a training plan, Xiaoyi uses Skills including web search, mobile health, calendar, and sports health Coach, providing a comprehensive plan.

Notably, thanks to HarmonyOS’s features, Xiaoyi also supports interaction across HarmonyOS devices. For example, using Skills like mobile Xiaoyi, PC Xiaoyi, and smart documents, Xiaoyi on the phone can retrieve documents from the PC.

Reportedly, Xiaoyi now has 500+ major partner Skills, 2000+ system intelligent agents operating. Due to capability improvements, Xiaoyi’s daily activation count reaches 3 billion, and daily Agent distributions increased 4.5 times in the past year.

Full-Scenario Ecosystem Becomes a Key Breakthrough

In the mobile internet era, Apple and Android used applications to build moats; in the AI era, operating systems may use intelligent agents and service networks to create new entry points.

That is, in the AI era, whoever has more capability supply, more service entry points, more terminal connectivity, may become the next super entry.

Therefore, for HarmonyOS, the next step is not just getting more developers to develop native HarmonyOS apps, but also to authorize HarmonyOS intelligence to invoke their services.

However, whether developers are willing to invest essentially depends on whether the HarmonyOS ecosystem is commercially attractive enough.

Although Huawei smartphones have returned to number one domestically, they remain shackled overseas. Against this backdrop, expanding the device scale of the HarmonyOS ecosystem via all-scenario products has become a key Huawei strategy.

This approach continues Huawei's 2019 “1+8+N” strategy—using smartphones as the core entry, connecting watches, earphones, PCs, tablets, glasses, and other terminals, and extending to more smart hardware.

Huawei once predicted that the 1+8+N all-scenario strategy would let HarmonyOS connect everything and open up a trillion-level market.

Currently, HarmonyOS ecosystem devices have reached 1.3 billion. In some niche markets—tablets, PCs, earphones, glasses—Huawei terminals perform well.

In the now-hot AI glasses track, Huawei has successfully captured a position, launching its first HarmonyOS 6-powered AI glasses in April, featuring AI shooting capabilities and equipped with "Xiaoyi Sees the World", helping users sense their environment via visual understanding and real-time broadcasting.

According to Runto Technology data, in the first four months of 2026, the domestic AI photography glasses market saw clear changes. Leveraging HarmonyOS’s ecosystem and AI snapping abilities, Huawei’s AI glasses ranked fourth after only 10 days on the market.

Meanwhile, HarmonyOS is enabling more capability migration between terminals—navigation tasks can flow between smartphones and EVs, content can be used across devices, home appliance statuses can be viewed uniformly.

This means, in the HarmonyOS ecosystem, developers are not just building smartphone apps, but service capabilities that operate across devices.

The same Agent or Skill could appear on phones, or run on glasses, earphones, watches, car systems, and even more terminals.

In the past five years, HarmonyOS has proven it can establish an independent ecosystem.

In the coming years, it needs to prove another point—in the Agent era, operating systems remain important, but the competitor may have changed from the app ecosystem to the capability ecosystem.

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