Huawei aims for 200m phones on its HarmonyOS in 2021

Huawei Technologies Co said the company aims to use its in-house operating system HarmonyOS in 200 million smartphones this year, as the Chinese technology giant accelerates its push to build a robust app ecosystem amid US government restrictions.

Wang Chenglu, president of the software department at Huawei's consumer business group, said HarmonyOS is an operating system designed for the internet of things era, which can connect all kinds of IoT devices with just one system.

"Huawei aims to have at least 300 million devices using HarmonyOS in 2021, with 200 million of them being smartphones and more than 30 million of them being tablets, smart watches, smart TVs and other products," Wang said, adding that the rest will be third-party products using the company's self-developed operating system.

HarmonyOS was unveiled more than one year ago, after Washington restricted Huawei from using Google's Android operating system. HarmonyOS is inarguably the biggest push by Huawei to build its own software ecosystem.

Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business group, said last month that starting from April, HarmonyOS would be gradually expanded to its flagship smartphones, with its latest foldable smartphone Mate X2 among the first batch to use the system.