Many people have been waiting for 5 years.

Five years ago, Huawei officially released HarmonyOS at the HDC 2019 Developer Conference. Five years later, Huawei is set to unveil the most significant chapter of HarmonyOS at the HDC 2024 Developer Conference.

From June 21st to 23rd, Huawei plans to continue holding the annual Huawei Developer Conference (HDC 2024) in Songshan Lake, Dongguan. It is expected that the developer beta plan for HarmonyOS NEXT (also known as HarmonyOS Galaxy Edition) will be officially announced.

This is the most important matter.

However, there is more than just this one thing at this developer conference. Will HarmonyOS NEXT officially launch under the name of HarmonyOS 5? Will there be an improvement in the quantity and quality of HarmonyOS native apps? What kind of experience will HarmonyOS NEXT itself bring? What changes will Huawei's Pangu large model bring to us? These questions may be the focus of many people's attention.

The "New World" Arrives with the Upcoming HarmonyOS NEXT Developer Beta

Although the entire developer conference lasts for 3 days, for most followers, the most valuable part is naturally the keynote speech on the 21st.

According to the official information of the Huawei Developer Conference (HDC 2024), starting at 2:30 pm on that day, Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, Chairman of the Terminal BG, and Chairman of the Intelligent Vehicle Solutions BU, will deliver the keynote speech titled "HarmonyOS Ecosystem: Fertile Soil for Innovation, Nurturing the Future".

Image/Huawei

Theoretically, Yu Chengdong will summarize the progress of the HarmonyOS ecosystem over the past year or even longer and officially announce the arrival of HarmonyOS NEXT. However, specific introductions may be left to He Gang, the CEO of Huawei's Terminal BG, who will appear next.

In other words, if you want to learn about the HarmonyOS NEXT system itself, the most important speech to pay attention to is He Gang's speech titled "HarmonyOS NEXT - Building a New HarmonyOS World" Together". Moreover, from the arrangement and content of the speeches, we will not see HarmonyOS 5, but the all-new HarmonyOS NEXT directly.

As for the subsequent naming, whether it will continue the HarmonyOS X pattern is also a question to be answered.

However, apart from adopting a purely self-developed HarmonyOS kernel and no longer being compatible with Android apps, there is not much reliable information about HarmonyOS NEXT currently available. Online screenshots show that the HarmonyOS NEXT developer version had already iterated to the first beta version Beta 1 (3.0.0.22) in May, indicating that HarmonyOS NEXT has been basically perfected compared to the earliest Preview version.

Of course, this is a developer beta version, and the consumer beta version will have to wait another week. According to previous information released by Huawei, the beta plan for HarmonyOS NEXT will be launched at the developer conference, and the consumer commercial version will be officially launched in the fourth quarter of this year.

Considering the release time of the Huawei Mate series, it can be basically determined that the official launch time of HarmonyOS NEXT will not be later than the launch time of the Huawei Mate 70 series, but there is also a possibility of an earlier launch.

Mate 60 series, Image/Huawei

This leads to another question that many people are concerned about: What devices can be upgraded to HarmonyOS NEXT?

From Huawei's perspective, the more devices that can be upgraded to HarmonyOS NEXT, the better. It can transform the previous massive HarmonyOS device users into HarmonyOS NEXT users, increasing user stickiness; and it can also increase the user device base of HarmonyOS NEXT, attracting more third-party apps and device manufacturers.

However, there are various challenges in reality. Adaptation costs are secondary, but limited by device performance and configuration, HarmonyOS NEXT may not be able to exert its due capabilities and experience on some devices, including entry-level devices from years ago, which may not be necessary to upgrade.

Of course, we cannot confirm the specific list of HarmonyOS NEXT upgrade plans at present, but we can actually refer to the supported devices of the latest version of HarmonyOS. As the latest consumer-oriented version of HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS 4.2's push updates began at the end of April, and the latest round of push updates has already covered the Huawei Mate 40 series.

The specific upgrade list for HarmonyOS 4.2 is as follows:

Image/Huawei

Overall, the HarmonyOS 4.2 upgrade plan still supports a large number of Kirin models released in 2019-2020, including six Honor models. However, some models that were supported in the previous version are not on the upgrade list, such as the Huawei Mate 20 series and Huawei P30 series.

Returning to HarmonyOS NEXT, the core changes are mainly reflected in mobile phones and tablets. Therefore, it can be roughly judged that mobile phones and tablets in the HarmonyOS 4.2 upgrade plan will basically be included in the HarmonyOS NEXT upgrade plan.

In addition to the Huawei Mate 70 series, Pura70 series, and other models equipped with the Kirin 9000 series chips that will directly come preinstalled with HarmonyOS NEXT, they should be on the first batch of upgrade lists.

Of course, having a system alone is absolutely not enough. Whether it's Android or iOS, users' core needs are met through individual apps.

HarmonyOS Native Apps are Gaining Momentum, When Will WeChat and TikTok Land?

In June 2019, Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei said in an interview, "The technical difficulty of creating an operating system is not great, but the difficulty lies in the ecosystem."

In fact, the developer conference is an important part of building an ecosystem, and since 2019, each Huawei Developer Conference has been large in scale, with a large number of developers participating every year. However, even so, this year's Huawei Developer Conference will be special, not only because the number of developers may be particularly high, but more importantly, because a truly established ecosystem will be established.

According to the event schedule, after Yu Chengdong and He Gang's speeches, Gong Ti, President of Huawei's Terminal BG Software Department, will deliver the speech titled "HarmonyOS Native Apps, Starting Fresh!". It is highly likely that the latest progress in app coverage will be announced, and it is not yet known whether the original plan of 5,000 apps will be changed, but there is no doubt that:

2024 will be a crucial year for the development of the HarmonyOS ecosystem.

This change actually showed signs last year. After announcing the HarmonyOS NEXT plan at last year's Huawei Developer Conference (HDC 2023), Huawei soon announced the full launch of HarmonyOS native apps at the autumn全场景新品发布会.

Image/Huawei

After a series of announcements, we quickly saw a series of actions from Huawei and the response of the entire domestic internet ecosystem.

Starting with Meituan, Huawei quickly swept through major internet companies by jointly holding the "HarmonyOS Native App Development Launch Ceremony". By January 2024, nearly half of the top 200 mobile internet apps had initiated the development of HarmonyOS native apps, including Meituan, Alipay, JD.com, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Gaode, and Mihoyo.

To some extent, this is just the end of the beginning. Immediately afterwards, within just 3 months of the start of 2024, Huawei expanded the number of apps joining the HarmonyOS ecosystem to over 4,000. The increase in speed is expected, given the demonstration by major companies, a series of follow-up promotions, and the momentum accumulated by HarmonyOS over the past few years. But even so, the number of over 4,000 apps is still impressive and may even exceed Huawei's internal expectations.

Because according to Huawei's set target, they plan to migrate 5,000 apps in 2024, satisfying most mobile phone users' 99% usage time through 200 national-level apps and 4,800 mainstream apps, thus achieving seamless migration for users.

Although "starting development" and "actually landing" are two different concepts, based on the current progress, the target of 5,000 apps is likely to be successfully completed. Even at this developer conference, I wouldn't be surprised if Huawei announces that 5,000 apps have already joined the HarmonyOS ecosystem.

But regardless, this is definitely good news for users who are interested in choosing HarmonyOS NEXT and Huawei devices, as it means users don't have to give up anything. However, we still have some concerns.

Although it is highly likely that they will be adapted, as of now, there is still no conclusive news about the two "time killers" WeChat and TikTok joining the HarmonyOS ecosystem. From the perspective of timing and promotion, this developer conference may be the best stage and opportunity to officially announce the two apps joining HarmonyOS, which can dispel all concerns from third-party developers and users in one fell swoop.

Pangu Large Model 5.0 Meets HarmonyOS NEXT

Also at last year's Huawei Developer Conference (HDC 2023), Huawei released HarmonyOS 4 and the all-new Xiaoyi based on the Pangu large model.

Half a year has passed, and now the trend of combining mobile phones with large models is becoming increasingly apparent, including Apple integrating Apple Intelligence into iOS 18. It goes without saying that Xiaoyi will be upgraded again, and how HarmonyOS NEXT will integrate with generative AI is also a focus of everyone's attention.

Image/Huawei

In fact, at Huawei's analyst conference in April, Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun specifically mentioned "building a 'Xiaoyi' super intelligent entity based on the Pangu large model." However, first and foremost, the large model as the underlying driver remains one of the keys to the upgrade.

Unlike a large number of large models that directly target C-end users, Huawei's Pangu large model, although not well-known among ordinary users, has a significant influence in the industry. Moreover, long before OpenAI released GPT-3.5 and ChatGPT, Huawei saw the potential of pre-trained large models to solve AI application scenarios and development fragmentation, and independently trained the Pangu large model, which has been continuously iterated.

At this Huawei Developer Conference (HDC 2024), Huawei will also release the Pangu large model 5.0, proclaiming it as "born for the industry." Meanwhile, Zhang Ping'an, Executive Director of Huawei Cloud, will deliver a speech titled "Pangu Large Model 5.0 Launch, Continuously Solving Industry Challenges," and Yao Jun, Director of Huawei's Noah's Ark Lab, will give a speech titled "Pangu Large Model 5.0 Decryption, Core Technological Innovations."

Image/Huawei

It can be predicted that the embodiment of Pangu Large Model 5.0 in HarmonyOS NEXT will still be through "Xiaoyi."

As Xu Zhijun said, with the emergence of large models, it has become increasingly realistic to equip every end user with a smart assistant, and Huawei's next step is to build "Xiaoyi" into a super assistant based on the Pangu large model and make HarmonyOS Next a natively intelligent operating system.

In terms of ideas and goals, this is not new, as countless people and companies have envisioned the scenario of everyone having a smart digital assistant, including after the emergence of ChatGPT. At the same time, from OPPO to Lenovo to Baidu, intelligent entities are generally regarded as one of the core ways for large models to truly land and face users.

However, Huawei is indeed one of the most promising manufacturers to realize a "super personal assistant." On the one hand, it is due to its leadership in the field of large models, and on the other hand, Huawei can design from the bottom up with HarmonyOS NEXT, "unifying the AI capability base and building system-level native intelligence."

And when Pangu Large Model 5.0 meets HarmonyOS NEXT, what kind of chemical reaction will it produce? Perhaps this will be the most anticipated and unpredictable thing at this Huawei Developer Conference.

Source: Lei Technology