China’s home-grown software and operating systems like Huawei Technologies’ HarmonyOS are gaining traction, according to an official of China’s technology ministry, as the country accelerates its push to cut reliance on foreign technology.
More than 55 million smartphones ran on the HarmonyOS mobile platform as of the end of March, according to Ke Jixin, vice-minister of industry and information technology.
“Domestic software like operating systems and databases has been improving steadily,” Ke said at a press conference on Tuesday. “We have seen a transformative shift in the experience of using domestic software compared to a few years ago, as they become smoother and easier to use.”
HarmonyOS has seen rapid adoption in the past few years on the back of Huawei’s comeback in the smartphone market. It surpassed Apple iOS in China in late 2024, and in early 2025 was only behind Android as the second-largest operating system in the market, according to Counterpoint data.
However, it faced renewed competition in the fourth quarter of 2025 amid the strong local reception for the iPhone 17 series. HarmonyOS, holding a 16 per cent market share in China, was pushed to third place by iOS with 22 per cent, while Android maintained its lead with 61 per cent of the market in the period, according to the latest Counterpoint data.
HarmonyOS, Huawei’s proprietary, closed-source operating system, is built on the open-source OpenHarmony project. Huawei launched HarmonyOS as an Android alternative for the Chinese market in August 2019, just months after the US government added the company to a trade blacklist that blocked it from buying US-origin technologies without Washington’s approval.
HarmonyOS has been hailed as an example of China’s efforts in domestic software independence.
At the press conference, Ke also noted that AI models such as Qwen by Alibaba Group Holding and HY by Tencent Holdings held leading positions in global open-source communities, and the latest DeepSeek V4 model had brought the benefits of artificial intelligence to a wider audience.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Looking forward, Ke said the ministry would accelerate the integration of AI with software to serve various industries and further bolster the development of the open-source ecosystem. — SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
