At the Huawei Developer Conference (HDC) 2026 on June 12, the company made it official: HarmonyOS has surpassed Apple’s iOS to become China’s second-largest smartphone operating system, trailing only Android. Yu Chengdong, Chairman of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, unveiled HarmonyOS 7 at the event, while Gong Ti, President of the Software Department, confirmed that HarmonyOS 6’s upgrade rate has reached 98%, with top app user satisfaction exceeding 50% and cumulative installations crossing 66 million devices.

According to Counterpoint Research data, HarmonyOS now commands 19% of China’s smartphone OS market — ahead of iOS at roughly 17% — with Android still dominant at around 64%. Globally, HarmonyOS has reached approximately 5% market share across all device types, up from 3% in Q1 2025.

A Milestone Years in the Making

HarmonyOS was born out of necessity. When the United States placed Huawei on its Entity List in 2019, cutting off access to Google services and American technology supply chains, Huawei had no choice but to build its own operating system from the ground up. What began as an emergency contingency has, seven years later, grown into a genuine platform powering smartphones, tablets, PCs, wearables, smart home appliances, in-car systems, and data center components — now spanning more than 1.3 billion active connected devices as announced at HDC 2026.

The native app count has grown sharply from around 20,000 apps in January 2025 to over 350,000 by March 2026, backed by more than 13,000 core developers. Major Chinese apps — WeChat, Alipay, Baidu, Meituan, Weibo, JD.com, Kuaishou, and Bilibili — are all now optimized natively for the platform.

HarmonyOS is thriving inside China, but the combination of no Android compatibility, no Google services, US sanctions, and no international app support creates walls that are very difficult to break through globally.

The Android Compatibility Break — A Decisive Turning Point

Perhaps the most consequential decision in HarmonyOS’s history came with HarmonyOS NEXT (versions 5 and above): Huawei completely removed Android runtime compatibility. In the early versions of HarmonyOS (1 through 4), users could still install and run standard Android APK files through a built-in compatibility layer — a crucial lifeline while the native app ecosystem was thin. That lifeline is now gone.

HarmonyOS 6 and 7 are fully independent operating systems. Only apps built natively with Huawei’s own ArkTS and ArkUI framework will run. This was a deliberate and bold move to establish genuine independence from Android — but it came at a steep cost for anyone expecting to use the phone outside of China.

Why the World Remains Locked Out

The barriers keeping HarmonyOS a China-only proposition are structural, not merely technical — and they reinforce each other in a cycle that is extremely difficult to break.

  • 🚫 No Google Services. There is no Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, or Google Play. Countless international apps depend on Google’s underlying infrastructure (push notifications, authentication, location APIs), making them non-functional even if theoretically ported to HarmonyOS.
  • ⚖️ US Sanctions. Huawei remains on the US Entity List, severely limiting hardware sales in Western markets and restricting partnerships with American technology companies.
  • 📱 No Third-Party OEM Adoption. Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and Samsung will not adopt HarmonyOS — doing so would cost them access to Google Play in their key markets across Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. Unlike Android’s decentralized model, HarmonyOS remains a single-vendor platform.
  • 📭 Missing International Apps. WhatsApp, Instagram, Netflix, Spotify, and Google Maps have no native HarmonyOS versions and no publicly announced plans to build them. Without users, developers have no incentive; without apps, there are no users — a textbook chicken-and-egg problem.
  • 🏪 Zero Retail Presence. In the US and UK, HarmonyOS devices are effectively absent from mainstream retail — no carrier listings, no Best Buy or Currys shelf space.

Where HarmonyOS Could Still Grow Internationally

Not every path is closed. Huawei has indicated early-stage expansion plans targeting South Korea, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East — regions where Google’s grip is comparatively weaker. In the Internet of Things and automotive sectors, where app ecosystems matter far less, HarmonyOS is already a genuinely competitive platform. BMW’s Neue Klasse vehicles, for instance, have partnered with Huawei for in-car system integration.

The HarmonyOS 7 developer beta, released today at HDC 2026, introduces the HarmonyOS Intelligent Agent Framework 2.0 with a task execution rate exceeding 90%, and delivers more than 15% performance improvement over HarmonyOS 6.1. The official stable release is expected this autumn alongside the Huawei Mate 90 series. Huawei’s next installation milestone target is 100 million HarmonyOS 6 devices by end of 2026.

Bottom Line

HarmonyOS is a technically impressive, rapidly maturing operating system that has genuinely displaced iOS within its home market. Its ambition — to become the world’s third major mobile OS — is credible on paper.

But for smartphone users outside China, HarmonyOS is effectively off-limits today. The dropped Android compatibility that demonstrated Huawei’s independence is the same decision that made the OS unusable for anyone who depends on Google services or international apps. Analysts broadly agree that HarmonyOS will remain a Chinese domestic smartphone platform for at least the next three to five years, with any meaningful global smartphone presence requiring either a dramatic geopolitical shift or a wholesale rebuild of international developer trust.

For now, HarmonyOS is a giant — but a giant whose territory ends at China’s borders.