On October 22, Chinese tech company Huawei unveiled its latest operating system (OS), HarmonyOS NEXT, China's first domestically developed mobile OS. It is now the world's third major mobile OS after Apple's iOS and Android. It took Huawei five years to make such a major update since its HarmonyOS 1.0 made its debut in 2019. HarmonyOS NEXT, different from its predecessors, has a self-developed OS that solely uses Hongmeng kernel and system architecture.

HarmonyOS NEXT offers better performance with 30 percent better system-wide fluency, a 56-minute increase in battery life, and 1.5GB more of system memory.

Other highlights are new home and lock screen customization options,  AI embedded in its core, and faster animation and app launch speeds.

The OS has 110 million lines of code, 6.75 million registered developers and more than one billion connected devices, the company said. It is also said 15,000 HarmonyOS native applications and meta services have been launched.

According to market research company Counterpoint Research, HarmonyOS overtook iOS in China for the first time, making up 17 percent of China's smartphone market in the first quarter of 2024. This makes it the second largest OS in the country.

The same quarter saw 5G adoption for the OS reach 50 percent, up from nine percent in the same period in 2023.