Huawei's HarmonyOS gears up for faster expansion on back of major apps WeChat and Douyin

Huawei Technologies is looking to further expand the presence of its HarmonyOS mobile platform on the back of two of mainland China's biggest social media apps, WeChat from Tencent Holdings and ByteDance-owned Douyin.

Shenzhen-based Huawei is close to reaching a deal with Tencent to make its super app WeChat fully operational on HarmonyOS without sharing any revenue, according to a report by Bloomberg on Wednesday, citing anonymous sources.

While Douyin now has a HarmonyOS-compatible version available for download, the Bloomberg report said ByteDance expressed no interest in opening talks about revenue sharing when Huawei reached out to the TikTok owner.

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Huawei and Tencent did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. ByteDance declined to comment on revenue-sharing talks with Huawei.

The latest initiatives by Huawei show how it is trying to buttress HarmonyOS' position as the second-biggest mobile operating system in mainland China, after overtaking Apple's iOS in the first quarter.

WeChat - marketed as Weixin on the mainland - has 1.36 billion monthly active users nationwide, while top short video platform Douyin has more than 600 million daily active users.

"Bloomberg's recent report on Huawei's talks with Tencent to establish a lower-than-industry share of 20 per cent for in-game purchases provides hope for a reset" of the 30 per cent take-rate standard of app stores over the past decade, Morningstar senior equity analyst Ivan Su wrote in a research note on Wednesday.

"Although Huawei's HarmonyOS currently represents a small percentage of smartphones in China, the potential lowering of its app store fee to 20 per cent could pressure other mobile app platforms to follow suit."

While revenue-sharing talks are still undetermined, providing favourable terms to app developers could help HarmonyOS stay ahead of iOS on the mainland.

People walk past a shop of Huawei Technologies in Shanghai's Huangpu district on June 5, 2024. Photo: Agence France-Presse alt=People walk past a shop of Huawei Technologies in Shanghai's Huangpu district on June 5, 2024. Photo: Agence France-Presse>

Huawei launched HarmonyOS in August 2019, three months after the US government added the firm to its Entity List. The privately held company is expected to reach a new milestone this year when it releases HarmonyOS Next, which will not support Android-based apps.

Huawei plans to release HarmonyOS Next with the Mate 70 series flagship smartphones later this year, rotating chairman Eric Xu Zhijun said in May.

The build-up of the HarmonyOS app ecosystem is "a crucial task for Huawei in 2024", Xu said in April. He added that 5,000 apps are expected to support HarmonyOS this year, with plans to grow that number to 1 million over time.

Both Tencent and ByteDance are among the major Chinese firms that have been working to make their apps compatible with HarmonyOS. These include Tencent's QQ Music and ByteDance's Qimao Novels.

Other large enterprises that have started development of HarmonyOS-based apps include Alibaba Group Holding, Meituan, Ant Group, JD.com and McDonald's China. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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