Recently, a well-known institution announced the situation of smartphone operating systems in the Chinese market and global market in the first quarter of 2024.

As we can see, in the domestic market, Android accounts for 68%, while Huawei HarmonyOS (HarmonyOS) shares reach as high as 17%, surpassing Apple's 16%, becoming the second largest mobile phone system in China.

People cheered and called it a victory for domestic operating systems. Huawei once said that 16% was the lifeline for HarmonyOS. After shouting for more than two years, it has finally been achieved.

In fact, it is indeed worth cheering and celebrating. After all, HarmonyOS has been launched since 2019 and has been nearly 5 years. It has finally achieved the 16% target and defeated Apple iOS, which is indeed gratifying.

However, if you think about it carefully, defeating Apple iOS in the domestic market and achieving the 16% target is actually a very easy thing. There's not much to celebrate, isn't it?

You should know that China is Huawei's home base. In the past, due to suppression, Huawei did not have 5G chips and could only sell 4G phones, so phone supply was insufficient, sales were not high, and market share was not high.

But for Huawei, as long as the phone supply recovers and keeps up, it is absolutely easy to capture 16% of the domestic market share. After all, during its peak, Huawei captured more than 40% of the domestic market share.

Therefore, when Huawei's Mate60 series of phones were launched last year, with the return of 5G and Kirin chips, Huawei's phone sales increased significantly, and its market share immediately grew. By the first quarter of 2024, it reached 17%, surpassing Apple.

All Huawei phones use HarmonyOS, so the system's share and phone share are basically the same. As a result, HarmonyOS's share also reached 17%, surpassing Apple's iOS.

If nothing unexpected happens, as Huawei's phone sales continue to grow, HarmonyOS's share will be even higher.

The difficulty for Huawei HarmonyOS to develop lies not in the domestic market but in the overseas market. Institutional data also shows this point. Although HarmonyOS's share in China is as high as 17%, in the global market, it is only 4%, about one-fifth of Apple iOS and one-twentieth of the Android system.

As shown in the figure below, Android accounts for 77%, Apple iOS for 19%, and HarmonyOS for 4%, a significant difference.

In the first quarter, global phone sales were approximately 300 million units, and a 4% share corresponds to approximately 12 million HarmonyOS phones (Huawei phones). If Huawei HarmonyOS wants to reach 16%, it needs to reach about 48 million units.

To reach 48 million units, Huawei needs to enter the top three globally and surpass Xiaomi at a minimum. Reaching 48 million units in a quarter means it may need to reach around 200 million units annually.

To achieve this sales volume, relying solely on the domestic market is definitely not feasible. After all, only 300 million units are sold in China each year. If Huawei wants to sell 200 million units domestically, wouldn't it need to capture more than 60% of the market? That's impossible.

Therefore, Huawei must also sell phones overseas. But to be honest, even if Huawei's phone chips and supply are normal, selling Huawei HarmonyOS phones in overseas markets will encounter many difficulties.

After all, HarmonyOS cannot install GMS, and overseas users will not be as enthusiastic about HarmonyOS as they are in the Chinese market. Therefore, it is easy for Huawei HarmonyOS to become the second place in the domestic market, but it is difficult to become the second place in the global market and requires long-term efforts.