New Delhi: Huawei’s HarmonyOS has held its ground as China’s second-largest mobile operating system, beating Apple’s iOS for the sixth straight quarter. The homegrown platform captured 17% of the market in Q2, edging past iOS at 16%, according to new figures from Counterpoint Research. Android continues to dominate with a 66% share. Counterpoint credited to Huawei’s Nova series smartphones for driving HarmonyOS adoption, while the foldable Pura X also performed strongly. The report underlines how Huawei’s software push has become a cornerstone of its broader strategy to insulate itself from the US technology sanctions.
HarmonyOS still trails far behind, powering just 4% of the smartphones sold last quarter, compared to Android’s 79% and iOS 17%, but inside China, its momentum is clear. Since launching in 2019 as a response to Washington’s trade blocklist, Huawei has steadily positioned HarmonyOS as a viable alternative to Android. The company doubled down last year with the HarmonyOS Next, an upgraded version that is going to drop support for the Android application entirely. The latest release, HarmonyOS 5, dubbed pure blood in China, is already installed on 17 million devices.
To expand its developer ecosystem, Huawei has also rolled out the Tiangong, a programme offering 1 billion yuan, which is around US $140.5 million in subsidies, to attract application makers from different industries. For now, HarmonyOS remains China-focused mainly, but its steady rise at home may provide Huawei with the confidence to take its pure blood system global.
