(Yicai) Oct. 23 -- Huawei Technologies has released HarmonyOS Next, the latest version of the Chinese tech giant’s self-developed operating system for smart devices and the first it has built separately from the Android ecosystem.

HarmonyOS Next, also known as HarmonyOS 5.0, has its own features, such as operating kernel, programming language, and artificial intelligence framework, which were developed without the use of Android open-source code, the Shenzhen-based firm said at a launch event yesterday.

A  comprehensive ecosystem is essential for a true operating system, said Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei's consumer business group. HarmonyOS has been installed on over one billion devices and its developer base has reached 6.75 million, with over 15,000 native apps and services already available, he noted.

“Huawei can't make HarmonyOS on its own,” Yu pointed out. “With the joint efforts of our partners, HarmonyOS-based apps are updated rapidly, almost once a day, indicating that the OS has achieved a historic breakthrough.”

Since Huawei fully launched native HarmonyOS apps in September last year, developers in 18 fields, including social media, entertainment, gaming, finance, as well as food and beverage, have joined the Harmony ecosystem.

According to a company insider, Huawei has more than 20,000 engineers in the HarmonyOS project, with tens of thousands of app partners also contributing hundreds of thousands of technicians to help build the ecosystem.

“We call on more partners and users to support and embrace HarmonyOS to build and share a new world," Yu said, adding that Huawei has received more than one million suggestions and feedback since the beta test started.

HarmonyOS is advancing much faster than the public estimated, industry insiders told Yicai. The mobile version of HarmonyOS Next will soon be installed in the next generation of Huawei's flagship Mate series, according to developers and experts.

The global market share of HarmonyOS was 4 percent in the first quarter of the year, with the percentage of fifth-generation network smartphones using the system rising to 50 percent of the total from 9 percent a year earlier, according to the latest statistics from Counterpoint.

"Only when many apps migrate from Android to HarmonyOS will HarmonyOS become the world's third-largest mobile OS after Apple's iOS and Google's Android," Eric Xu, Huawei's vice chairman and rotating chairman, said earlier this year. “Huawei will first build the HarmonyOS ecosystem in the Chinese market and then gradually promote it overseas.”

App migration is a huge task, but the industry and app developers are also supporting it, Xu noted.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione