HarmonyOS native apps top 100,000 as devices surpass 80 million

On August 28, at the 2026 HarmonyOS Ecosystem Conference in Shenzhen, Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun said native HarmonyOS apps had surpassed 100,000. More than 400,000 apps are now available to users on HarmonyOS handsets.

The audience behind those apps is growing fast, at least by Huawei's shipment measure. Devices running HarmonyOS 6 had exceeded 80 million cumulative shipments as of August 20. Huawei says the ecosystem could pass 100 million users in the fourth quarter, based on its current pace of weekly additions. That number is a forward-looking target, not a count of users already reached.

The software milestone matters because it changes the economics for developers. Huawei describes the ecosystem as moving past its initial cultivation period: once enough people use a platform, better applications can attract more users, which in turn gives developers more reason to invest. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on August 26 that HarmonyOS had formally become the world's third-largest mobile operating system, as the platform gains ground alongside iOS and Android in China's smartphone market.

For users and developers, the concrete shift is choice and reach inside Huawei's ecosystem. A phone buyer has access to a larger application catalogue, while developers can now see enough users to justify investment. Huawei is also taking the operating system into cars, home appliances, metallurgy and petrochemicals through OpenHarmony, its open-source variant; devices built on it have surpassed 1.35 billion cumulative units.

The next phase is global ambition. Huawei wants HarmonyOS to become a “second choice” for the world and says the ecosystem must use a head start in AI to lead on intelligence before pushing overseas with open-source community partners. The figures establish a substantial base, but the 100-million-user milestone is still projected, and the global ambition remains a next phase rather than an achieved deployment.