Huawei to reclaim top spot in China's smartphone market by 2026! Xu Zhijun: Huawei is swapping engines mid-flight with domestic chips and HarmonyOS.

At the HarmonyOS Ecosystem Conference 2026 held in Shenzhen, Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun delivered a speech titled "Building the HarmonyOS Ecosystem Is a Marathon Without a Finish Line."

Xu stated that the HarmonyOS ecosystem has begun to take shape, with the number of native HarmonyOS apps surpassing 100,000, and over 400,000 apps available on HarmonyOS phones.

He mentioned that starting in 2025, Huawei has gradually transitioned its "1+8" full-device lineup to HarmonyOS, developed based on OpenHarmony.

By 2026, Huawei phones had regained the top spot in China's market shipment share, with the lead continuing to expand each quarter.

As of August 20, 2026, the number of devices running HarmonyOS 6 had exceeded 80 million, with projections to surpass 100 million in the fourth quarter of this year.

Xu noted that this achievement came against the backdrop of Huawei's new products fully adopting domestic chips and the HarmonyOS system.

"In other words, we achieved the top domestic market shipment share using domestic chips and the HarmonyOS ecosystem, successfully 'changing the engine mid-flight,' without any decline in altitude or speed," Xu said.

In Xu's view, the HarmonyOS ecosystem has now "gained a firm foothold" in the Chinese market, but two tough challenges remain before ultimate success.

One is seizing the opportunities of the AI era to lead in the intelligence competitiveness and experience of HarmonyOS devices; the other is taking HarmonyOS successfully overseas to achieve global development.