Four days after Apple confirmed that Siri AI would not be launched in China, Huawei took to the stage in Dongguan to declare that HarmonyOS 7 marks the beginning of the agent era. Huawei stepped into the gap that Apple was unable to fill with a purpose-built architecture.
Actual changes in HarmonyOS 7
The highlight change is HarmonyOS Intelligent Agent Framework 2.0, which restructures the OS around what Huawei calls an “intent-as-a-service” model, compressing what previously required navigation of multiple apps into a single natural language command.
At the heart of this is Huawei’s AI assistant, Xiaoyi, which has been reimagined from a traditional voice tool into what the company calls a system-level intelligence agent. Xiaoyi currently controls over 2,100 system-level functions and works with over 2,000 third-party AI agents developed across Huawei’s developer ecosystem.
Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, positioned this release as a generational turning point, saying, “In 2019, HarmonyOS was born. In 2023, native HarmonyOS apps began. In 2026, HarmonyOS will enter the agent era.”
Underneath is Huawei’s latest underlying model, openPangu 2.0, with 505 billion parameters in the Pro version and 92 billion parameters in the Flash version, both of which support 512K context windows. A 30 billion parameter on-device model will be released on the Kirin chip by fall 2026. HarmonyOS 7 also delivers more than 15% performance improvement compared to HarmonyOS 6.1, according to Huawei’s own benchmarks.
The claimed task execution rate is over 90%, but this number is proprietary to Huawei and has not been independently verified.
Market position is being strengthened
The numbers shared at HDC 2026 reflect changes that have already taken place. In the first quarter of 2026, HarmonyOS accounted for 19% of the Chinese smartphone OS market, compared to Apple iOS’s 16% and Android’s 65%. According to Counterpoint Research, HarmonyOS first overtook iOS in China in the second quarter of 2025.
Its trajectory is more important than any single feature, as China is a market where Apple currently cannot operate at an AI level, but it is also a market that Huawei has fully optimized. The agent network coordinated by Xiaoyi includes partnerships with Ctrip for travel planning and Ant Medical for health data analysis, and these services are embedded in a consumer base in China that Apple’s architecture does not reach.
where are the limits
The scope of the challenge to Apple needs to be adjusted. HarmonyOS 7 is currently in developer beta, with a stable consumer release expected this fall. More than 2,000 AI agents are locked into China’s app ecosystem.
The platform includes over 400,000 apps and services, which is an important but still only part of what Apple’s App Store covers. Huawei’s ambitions to popularize HarmonyOS internationally remain ambitious for now.
There are also design considerations that soften the apparent divergence. HarmonyOS 7 adopts the same liquid glass aesthetic that Apple introduced with iOS 26 and Samsung brought to One UI 9. Visual languages are converging, even though the underlying architecture and regulatory environment are moving in opposite directions.
long arc
HarmonyOS exists because of US sanctions. When Huawei lost access to Google’s Android in 2019, it built its own operating system out of necessity. By January 2026, more than 90% of Huawei devices were running a fully homegrown version. This enforced independence is a structural advantage in markets where Apple currently cannot deploy major AI capabilities.
Sanctions built a platform. Regulatory friction has been eliminated.
SEE ALSO: Siri AI comes with Google, locking out much of the world
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