April 8th, as per official data released by Huawei, the Hongmeng ecosystem has seen over 4000 applications joining its ranks to date. Compared to the initial 200 applications announced on January 18th, this staggering growth signifies a twentyfold increase in native Hongmeng applications within a mere two-month period.
This rapid expansion underscores the swift progress in the development of the Hongmeng ecosystem, propelling it closer to its envisioned targets. Earlier this year, Huawei's Terminal Cloud President, Zhu Yonggang, expressed the company's ambition to collaborate with partners to create 5000 "pure-blood" native Hongmeng applications by the end of 2024.
Furthermore, Huawei has announced that the Hongmeng Star River version is slated for consumer use in the fourth quarter of this year. Last September, Huawei unveiled HarmonyOS NEXT, set to open to developers in the first quarter of 2024, thus marking the comprehensive launch of native Hongmeng applications.
Within just a few months, over half of China's Top 200 mobile apps have begun supporting the development of native Hongmeng applications. Additionally, the daily registration of Hongmeng developers is experiencing rapid growth.
The application scope of the Hongmeng system continues to expand, evolving from its initial support for smart screens to lightweight IoT devices in 2020, and further expanding to smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and wristbands in 2021. Presently, the Hongmeng system is running on an increasing array of devices across various scenarios, including in-vehicle infotainment systems.
Technologically, Huawei has been actively developing a robust foundation for the Hongmeng ecosystem, encompassing distributed technology, the Ark compiler, super terminals, meta-services, cross-platform development, and the Ark engine, providing formidable support for the ecosystem's growth.
Given the current trajectory of HarmonyOS development, it's more a matter of when, not if, Tencent-owned apps like WeChat will join the ecosystem.
