On June 12, the Huawei Developer Conference 2026 (HDC 2026) opened at Songshan Lake in Dongguan, with Leikeji invited to provide full coverage of the event. This year’s HDC featured many key topics, such as HarmonyOS 7, openPangu 2.0, edge 30B models, Harmony Intelligence Framework 2.0, DevEco Code, and more. When viewed collectively, the core message is clear: Huawei is advancing Harmony from a “native AI OS” to an “Agent OS.”

(Image Source: On-site Photography by Leikeji)

The concept of an Agent may still be unfamiliar to the general public, but its widespread adoption is inevitable. When AI Agents become the new interaction gateway, can operating systems merely run applications, manage hardware, and connect devices? Huawei’s answer is clear: the new Harmony will not only make phones smoother, safer, and more visually appealing but also understand user intentions, orchestrate application capabilities, execute tasks across multiple devices, and reorganize developer services into system-callable Skills and Agents, achieving “Agent Affinity.”

Many Harmony users anticipated that HarmonyOS 7 would introduce innovative individual features, such as some particularly interesting small functions. While these are indeed present, the more significant change is Huawei’s complete overhaul of the relationship between applications and the system for the Agent era.

In the past, applications served as independent entry points. Users had to open separate apps for food delivery, music, maps, shopping, and schedules, completing operations step-by-step within each app. The logic of Agent OS is entirely different: users state their goals, the system understands the tasks, and then invokes the appropriate application capabilities. For the operating system, this means it must know not only “which apps are installed on the phone” but also what each app can do, which capabilities can be invoked, which data requires authorization, and which tasks can be completed across devices.

Therefore, Huawei has placed the “Agent Affinity System Architecture” at the core.

Within this architecture, application intelligence, application agentization, and application skillification are aligned in the same direction. On the HarmonyOS side, there is the HMAF (Harmony Intelligence Framework), Ark Agentic Framework, Xiao Yi System Intelligence, Intelligence Hub, and edge large models; on the cloud side, there is the Xiao Yi Open Platform, Agent Core JiuWen, and cloud-based large models. In other words, Huawei aims to do far more than make Xiao Yi a better chat companion—it hopes to enable Harmony applications to be disassembled, understood, and orchestrated.

(Image Source: On-site Photography by Leikeji)

Xiao Yi is no longer just a voice assistant. According to Huawei’s official data, Xiao Yi is activated 3 billion times daily, with 180 million daily active users. It answers 270 million calls, saves 6.77 million hours, and performs 3.9 billion translations. Meanwhile, Xiao Yi already possesses 2,100+ system capabilities, 500+ partner-selected Skills, and 2,000+ Harmony Intelligence Agents. For Huawei, these high-frequency touchpoints form the foundational entry points for a system-level Agent.

In fact, at the recently concluded WWDC26, Apple was pursuing a similar approach. Apple introduced Siri AI and incorporated iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and visionOS 27 into a new round of upgrades under Apple Intelligence. Apple also emphasized App Intents, screen awareness, personal context understanding, and agentic coding in Xcode 27.

(Image Source: Apple)

Both Huawei and Apple share a common vision: AI must move beyond the chatbox and integrate into system entry points, application invocation layers, and developer toolchains. The difference lies in their approaches: Apple is embedding Agent capabilities within its mature App Store, Siri, and Apple Intelligence ecosystem. In contrast, Huawei is more directly incorporating application agentization, skillification, and system-level data into the operating system framework during a phase where the Harmony ecosystem still needs expansion.

Today, iOS 27 resembles the integration of AI Agents into an existing ecological order, while HarmonyOS 7 is reorganizing the Harmony ecosystem order through Agents.

Of course, for Agents to truly function, the underlying model must keep pace. At HDC 2026, Huawei unveiled openPangu 2.0, offering two versions: Pro, with a total of 505B parameters and 18B activated parameters, and Flash, with a total of 92B parameters and 6B activated parameters, supporting 512K long contexts. Huawei also plans to gradually open-source seven major components starting June 30, including pre-training code, post-training code, and training operators.

(Image Source: On-site Photography by Leikeji)

openPangu 2.0 is integrated with Harmony Agent tasks, Ascend computing power, edge models, Xiao Yi, and developer tools. On the edge side, Huawei showcased the “Kirin Chip Affinity, Native 30B Edge Model”: with a total of 30B parameters and 2B activated parameters, it enhances inference efficiency through quantization pruning, expert reuse, and activated expert prediction.

This indicates that Harmony’s AI transformation is not merely about “integrating large models into the system” but also emphasizing edge-cloud collaboration. Cloud-side models handle complex reasoning and Agent tasks, while edge-side models manage local perception, privacy protection, low-latency responses, and high-frequency small tasks. For an Agent OS to be truly functional, it must dynamically allocate resources among privacy, speed, cost, and task complexity.

HarmonyOS 7 also integrates AI into traditional system capabilities. For example, the ultra-smooth Ark Engine now incorporates a performance large model trained on over 2 billion scenarios, delivering an intelligent and smooth experience. Compared to HarmonyOS 6, HarmonyOS 7 achieves a 15% performance improvement, with annual load growth below 10%. App switching, check-ins, key app retention, and gaming frame rate stability have also improved.

(Image Source: On-site Photography by Leikeji)

In terms of security, Harmony Star Shield emphasizes “greater intelligence and proactivity,” covering capabilities such as AI voice alteration detection, web content recognition, QR code risk identification, app impersonation risk detection, collaboration with Alipay for fund security, and defense against scripted fraud. Particularly noteworthy is the collaboration with Alipay: after integrating Harmony Star Shield’s anti-fraud platform with Ant Group’s risk control capabilities, fraud-related metrics improved by 35.8%, and unauthorized use-related metrics improved by 42.3%.

This is highly significant for an Agent OS. As the system begins to understand user intentions, invoke services, and execute actions, risks shift from “users making mistakes” to “the system making mistakes on behalf of users.” The greater the convenience, the more critical the security boundaries become.

Additionally, Harmony’s traditional interconnection advantages remain intact. Harmony Star River Interconnection emphasizes faster, smarter, and more open connectivity, achieving a multi-path concurrent aggregation rate of 250MB/s. Xiao Yi enables one-command multi-device collaboration, with interconnection extending to OpenHarmony, iOS, and other third-party systems. For an Agent to truly become a new entry point, it must operate beyond a single phone—it must facilitate task flow across phones, tablets, PCs, in-vehicle systems, wearables, and even third-party systems.

(Image Source: On-site Photography by Leikeji)

To support the growing Harmony application ecosystem, Huawei has upgraded its developer tools. The newly released Harmony Programming Intelligence includes 70+ Skills, a knowledge base of 20 million words, and 10+ tools, available in product forms such as DevEco Code and DevEco CLI. These tools not only enhance coding efficiency but also help developers understand how to skillify and agentize application capabilities. In the future, Harmony app development will require developers to consider not only pages and functions but also how their capabilities can be discovered, understood, and invoked by the system.

(Image Source: On-site Photography by Leikeji)

Overall, the main thread of HarmonyOS 7 is clear: using Xiao Yi as the entry point, HMAF 2.0 and the Agent Affinity System Architecture organize capabilities, openPangu 2.0 and edge models provide the AI foundation, the Ark Engine, Star Shield Security, and Star River Interconnection offer system guarantees, while DevEco Code/CLI bring developers into a new development logic.

The significance of HarmonyOS 7 extends beyond “improved system experience.” The more profound change is that Huawei is rebuilding the operating system’s value chain around Agents.

In recent years, competition among mobile operating systems has focused on smoothness, app ecosystems, privacy and security, multi-device collaboration, and imaging experiences. With the rise of large models, the industry has begun integrating AI assistants, AI photo editing, AI summarization, and AI search into systems. However, for users, the true value lies in minimizing steps rather than adding more entry points.

For example, before a business trip, can the system automatically understand flights, hotels, schedules, ride-hailing, and reimbursement? Before shopping, can it understand budgets, inventory, discounts, and delivery addresses? Before exercising, can it understand physical condition, training plans, and schedule conflicts?

These tasks cannot be completed by a single app. They require the system to understand user context, models to interpret intentions, applications to expose capabilities, security systems to assess risks, and multi-device collaboration for execution. Whoever organizes these elements will be closer to the new entry point in the AI era.

(Image Source: On-site Photography by Leikeji)

This is particularly crucial for Huawei.

The Harmony ecosystem has moved beyond its infancy. HarmonyOS 6 has surpassed 66 million terminal devices, with over 1.3 billion Harmony ecosystem devices. This scale demonstrates a solid user and device base, but the next phase of ecological competition will not solely depend on “device count” or “app count.” As AI Agents transform service entry points, the system’s ability to organize application capabilities may become more critical than merely accumulating apps.

(Image Source: On-site Photography by Leikeji)

The opportunity lies in the fact that Agent OS may allow Harmony to bypass some traditional app ecosystem catch-up logic. In the past, system ecosystem competition required users to open specific apps and developers to compete for desktop placement, push permissions, and in-app retention. Agent OS competition will focus on which application capabilities can be understood by the system, invoked by Xiao Yi, and participate in cross-app tasks. For Harmony, which is still rapidly expanding its ecosystem, skillification and agentization may reduce user reliance on traditional app entry points.

However, the pressure is undeniable. With 500+ partner-selected Skills, 2,000+ Harmony Intelligence Agents, 70+ programming Skills, and 20+ AI capabilities open, Huawei has made a start. However, truly changing user habits will require more head applications (flagship apps), more stable invocation success rates, and clearer development guidelines.

Developers may experience even greater changes than imagined. In the future, developing Harmony apps will require considering not only “how to design app pages, implement functions, and optimize performance” but also “how the system can invoke their capabilities.” Food delivery apps must expose order, address, discount, and delivery status information; music apps must expose playback, playlists, scene recognition, and spatial audio capabilities; local lifestyle apps must enable the system to understand restaurants, routes, waitlists, reservations, and 3D real-world capabilities.

(Image Source: On-site Photography by Leikeji)

In the short term, users will primarily notice HarmonyOS 7’s smoothness, security, interconnection, and spatial experiences: faster app switching, more stable gaming, proactive fraud prevention, smoother multi-device collaboration, and more immersive weather apps and spatial wallpapers. However, if Agent OS succeeds, the relationship between users and systems will shift from “searching for functions” to “delegating tasks.” Users will no longer need to know which app hides a function several layers deep—they will simply tell Xiao Yi what they want to accomplish, and the system will understand the context, invoke Skills, execute tasks across devices, assess risks, and deliver results.

Apple has a strong ecosystem and privacy system, but the regional availability, model capabilities, and developer access depth of Siri AI still require observation. Huawei has a full-scenario device lineup, end-cloud-chip collaboration, and determination in building the Harmony ecosystem, but it also needs to prove that its Agent architecture can be truly utilized by more developers.

Spatial capabilities represent another blueprint Huawei has drawn for the market and developers this time.

Huawei began with spatial design, starting from desktop icons, folders, cards, the Weather app, and 3D spatial wallpapers. Subsequently, Remy demonstrated the rapid generation of realistic 3D spaces from videos. V2Fun / ArkGraphics 3D can generate 3D models from a single photo. Dianping's 3D real-world restaurant views cover more cities and 1,000 restaurants. JD.com's Product 3D Shadow showcases 3D live streaming, 3D product details, and AR sizing, providing data that HarmonyOS 3DGS reduces 3D modeling costs for products by 90% and shortens the cycle from 2-3 weeks to 0.5 hours.

(Image source: Huawei)

For the market, this means that Harmony's competition is no longer confined to the mobile system itself but extends to merchant content production, platform service presentation, developer toolchains, and multi-device scenarios. For Huawei, this helps establish a differentiated narrative for Harmony distinct from Android and iOS. For developers, it provides new functional interfaces and business entry points. For users, the truly valuable aspects will ultimately translate into fewer operations, stronger understanding, more natural cross-device experiences, and content expression closer to the real world.

The core message of HDC 2026 is clear: Huawei does not want Harmony to remain just a "native system" but hopes it will become the task, capability, and scenario gateway in the AI era, transforming it into a full-fledged AgentOS.

But honestly, this path is somewhat challenging. A true Agent OS cannot merely showcase architecture diagrams at press conferences or rely solely on model parameters and assistant demonstrations. It requires a sufficient number of application Skills, stable intent recognition, reliable end-cloud collaboration, explainable user authorization, developers willing to open up capabilities, and users genuinely willing to delegate tasks to the system.

Fortunately, Huawei now offers a relatively complete framework: Xiaoyi as the gateway, HMAF 2.0 as the intelligent agent framework, openPangu 2.0 and on-device 30B models as the AI foundation, Ark Engine, Star Shield Security, and Star River Interconnection for system support, DevEco Code / CLI as developer tools, and spatial computing and third-party case studies for scenario implementation.

(Image source: Huawei)

As for how well this solution performs in the future, it largely depends on the adaptation speed after the HarmonyOS 7 Developer Beta, whether leading apps truly adopt Skill-based approaches, whether the open-source ecosystem of openPangu 2.0 becomes active, and, most importantly, how willing users are to embrace it.

Regardless of the outcome, HDC 2026 has laid the issues bare: in the AI era, the value of operating systems is changing. Clearly, HarmonyOS 7 is betting on this transformation. Huawei aims to firmly grasp the new era's operational gateways and control the definition of AI-era operating systems in its own hands.