Huawei Technologies Co took a bold step into the next era of intelligent operating systems with the official release of the developer beta version of the HarmonyOS 7 operating system.

The new OS introduces spatial computing capabilities and a comprehensive upgrade for the intelligent agent era, bringing new abilities, experiences, and scenarios to users.

"The number of devices running HarmonyOS 6 has surpassed 66 million, making it the second‑largest smartphone operating system in China," Yu Chengdong, Huawei's executive director and chairman of its terminal business group, said.

"This milestone means the HarmonyOS ecosystem has entered a new phase in terms of user scale — moving from technical validation to large‑scale expansion," he said. The ecosystem has entered a fast‑growth lane, with 11 million registered developers.

Rather than simply adding an AI shortcut, the HarmonyOS 7 has reconstructed its core around artificial intelligence. The system's Harmony Intelligence has been fully migrated to an Agent-based architecture, with the upgraded Xiaoyi voice assistant now serving as the smart nucleus of the entire OS. Huawei aims to make HarmonyOS the first operating system in the industry to be completely reconstructed by AI.

Huawei said the total number of apps and services on the HarmonyOS AppGallery has exceeded 400,000, of which more than 23,000 have completed native HarmonyOS adaptation. In parallel, multi-device products — including PCs, smart screens, smartwatches, and in-vehicle systems — are advancing in lockstep, further refining the all-scenario connected experience across phones, tablets, wearables, PCs, and cars.

At the company's 2026 Harmony Developer Conference held in Shenzhen, Guangdong province on Friday, Huawei also officially open-sourced its Pangu large language model — openPangu 2.0 — with its largest version boasting 505 billion parameters.

Commenting on the model's scale, Yu candidly acknowledged the constraints Huawei faces. "A large portion of our computing power is supporting the needs of other domestic enterprises, leaving very limited resources for ourselves," he said. "Moreover, for extremely large models, the demands on computing power and cost are extremely high. By developing a model with several hundred billion parameters, we aim to achieve higher computing efficiency."

"Last year, just before Oct 1, Huawei put me back in charge of the development of large language models," Yu said. "I will lead the team to catch up and overtake — from number one in China to number one in the world. In my dictionary, there is no second place, only first."