China's Response in the Digital Economy Era: The momentum of "HarmonyOS Adoption" in government and enterprise office applications is strong.
"OpenHarmony encompasses both desktop and mobile terminals, as well as various Internet of Things terminals. It is an operating system that can operate on all terminals in the era of intelligent Internet of Everything," stated Xu Zhijun, the rotating chairman of Huawei, at the HarmonyOS Ecology Conference when referring to the recently released "pure-blood" HarmonyOS.
After a decade of investment, the HarmonyOS operating system has completed a "Long March" that has covered the development process of European and American countries in thirty years, and has also redefined the boundaries and value of the operating system.
Since then, the HarmonyOS ecology has been growing at an unprecedented pace. In the first quarter of 2024, HarmonyOS surpassed iOS in the domestic market for the first time, becoming the second-largest operating system. At the end of October, the "pure-blood" HarmonyOS NEXT was officially released, and the number of terminal devices equipped with HarmonyOS exceeded 1 billion, laying a solid foundation for the development of its ecology.
After crossing the "survival line", Huawei announced that the goal for the next year is to build "100,000 applications". This number is not only a direct verification of the competitiveness of HarmonyOS, but also an important node towards a "million-level" ecology. There are approximately 500,000 applications with download records in the app stores of ordinary consumers' mobile phones. The "100,000" scale is a touchstone to verify the competitiveness of HarmonyOS and the attractiveness of the industry, and it is also an important node towards a "million-level" ecology.
Xu Zhijun said, "A large number of niche, low-frequency but essential applications have not yet been enabled for HarmonyOS." For example, in addition to 5,000 commonly used applications, government and enterprise office application software, which is an important work application, is also a daily necessity for hundreds of millions of users. Therefore, Xu Zhijun calls for more developers, partners, and social forces to work together to deeply promote the native applications of HarmonyOS in various "capillary" fields.
He emphasized that the work applications within government agencies, enterprises, and public institutions also need to develop the HarmonyOS version to meet the work needs of government and enterprise workers. He hopes that more government and enterprise social organizations can pay attention to and accelerate the adaptation of their internal application systems to HarmonyOS.
Government and enterprise office applications are not only another bridgehead of the HarmonyOS ecology, but also a key entry point to promote collaborative innovation in the industrial chain. This time, Huawei's goal is not simply to follow the global market rules, but to break the situation with an ecological drive, build a new business model of "pure-blood" HarmonyOS, and reshape the industrial pattern of the operating system.
Self-reliance and Control, Safety First
Currently, the competition in the global digital economy has deepened from the application level to the contest of the underlying architecture. The self-reliance and control of key technologies such as chips and operating systems are directly related to the country's security and discourse power in the future information and communication field.
Take the recent example of the US Department of Commerce listing 140 Chinese semiconductor enterprises on the trade restriction list. This wave of restrictive measures under the pretext of "national security" once again highlights the severe challenges facing the stability of the global supply chain and the fairness of the technology ecosystem. From "supply cut-off" to "chain breakage", technological bullying is becoming more targeted, and the risk of being controlled by core technologies is constantly increasing.
The government and enterprise office scenarios have higher requirements for the self-reliance and controllability of the operating system. According to the "Document No. 79" of the information technology application innovation market, central enterprises and state-owned enterprises need to complete 100% independent replacement of their enterprise information systems by 2027. This policy indicates that self-reliance and control have become the dual choice of technology development direction and policy implementation.
Because government and enterprise office applications carry highly sensitive data flows, from policy documents to business secrets, from production processes to supply chain collaboration, and even the management and circulation of employee privacy and other information, absolute security is required. In this environment, the "pure-blood" HarmonyOS, which realizes full-stack coverage from the system kernel, file system to programming framework, AI framework and large model, is deeply rooted at the bottom layer, demonstrating its strong strength in systematic innovation.
Since the project was initiated in 2015, "safety" has been written into every line of code as the foundation of HarmonyOS. Thanks to its full-stack self-developed characteristics, the native HarmonyOS has the opportunity to reconstruct the security system and order of the operating system. The system's Star Shield security architecture re-constructs a complete security and privacy protection system from the system layer, framework layer, and application layer in a hierarchical manner.
The pure governance architecture of the native HarmonyOS can ensure that the operating system is not subject to external interference and malicious tampering. The privacy protection and data security architecture is fully encrypted during application and transmission, greatly reducing the risk of data leakage and external attacks. This deeply integrated software and hardware collaborative capability enables government and enterprise users to achieve full-link security protection from the source to the transmission end when facing increasingly strict data compliance requirements.
At the same time, through the encryption sharing mechanism of HarmonyOS, government and enterprise organizations can finely control the permission of internal file sharing. This system-level sharing mechanism does not rely on applications, is not limited to sharing channels, does not allow editing and screenshots, and only authorized users can open it, which can effectively prevent important files from being viewed or leaked by unauthorized personnel.
In addition, the distributed security structure of the native HarmonyOS provides multi-terminal and multi-device security guarantees for government and enterprise office applications, and is particularly suitable for large-scale government and enterprise environments that highly rely on collaboration and real-time performance. In a high-concurrency and complex operating environment, the fault-tolerant mechanism of the HarmonyOS ensures the stability of the system, and can be flexibly customized for security according to business needs.
The "safety as a service" architecture design of the native HarmonyOS enables government and enterprises to not only ensure the security of data but also improve the operational efficiency of the overall system during the process of promoting digital transformation, achieving true fine-grained management and risk control.
After the advent of the HarmonyOS, the HarmonyOS kernel has obtained the first international CC EAL6+ certificate in the field of general operating system kernels in the industry, and the first EAL5+ certification in the field of intelligent terminal operating systems. These characteristics provide a solid data and privacy guarantee for government and enterprise organizations to handle office affairs.
This irreplaceability has made the expansion of the ecological territory of the native HarmonyOS initially effective. At the 2024 Native HarmonyOS Night and Huawei Full-scenario New Product Launch Conference, Huawei disclosed that general office applications have covered more than 38 million enterprises nationwide, including the native HarmonyOS versions of Yunjia, Feishu, Mobile Office M3, Tongda OA, etc.
The Era of HarmonyOS, Improving Quality and Efficiency
As the controller of massive highly sensitive information, government and enterprise office applications urgently need a reliable and secure operating system, which not only ensures data security, prevents external attacks and infiltrations, but also improves information processing, decision-making management, and digital production efficiency.
Currently, travel expenses have become the second-largest controllable cost for enterprises. A unified internal business travel platform can efficiently integrate resources from multiple parties such as airlines, hotel groups, capital providers, and business travel companies. Completing operations such as travel application, approval, booking, and reimbursement on one platform also saves a lot of time and energy, improving the overall efficiency.
In early November, the business travel platforms of several large central enterprises such as State Grid, China Railway, and China National Petroleum Corporation took the lead in realizing the native HarmonyOS. At the same time, with the technical advantages of the native HarmonyOS, enterprises can monitor business travel expenses in real time, optimize resource allocation, and reduce operating costs, solving the three pain points of compliance control, cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and simplified experience in the internal business travel management of enterprises at one time.
At present, enterprise business travel applications such as Ctrip Business Travel and Hesai have also joined the HarmonyOS ecology, and their service scope has exceeded 1 million enterprises, further promoting the rapid expansion and deep integration of the HarmonyOS ecology in the enterprise-level application field, and providing intelligent and fine-grained management solutions for more enterprises.
In addition, under the macro trend of digital transformation, the demand for government and enterprise office scenarios is gradually showing more refined and diversified characteristics. In the past, the expectations of many organizations for digitalization were mostly the "three basic functions", namely online approval, online attendance, and online communication.
However, up to now, with the continuous progress of technology and the profound changes in working methods, the collaborative needs between various terminal devices are becoming increasingly urgent, requiring the realization of smooth data flow across platforms and terminals, which poses a significant challenge to traditional operating systems, and their limitations are gradually emerging.
In this context, the adaptation process of the native HarmonyOS version applications is accelerating. Relying on the strong system base of the native HarmonyOS, complete development tools, and rich SDK and third-party library support, partners in various fields can efficiently adapt applications. On this basis, the advantages of the system in terms of native intelligence and full scenarios are gradually emerging, greatly improving the office efficiency of government and enterprise organizations.
For example, in the native HarmonyOS version of DingTalk, which has more than 700 million users, users can directly initiate a DingTalk video conference in the address book, or directly invoke many internal HR, finance, administration, procurement and other workflow processes of DingTalk in Xiaoyi. Such a system-level function can undoubtedly improve the efficiency of enterprises and employees.
In terms of internal coordination within government organizations, the native HarmonyOS application of Beijing's government affairs collaborative office platform "Jingban" has also been launched internally. This application integrates more than 400 government affairs system entrances in Beijing, basically covering the four-level units in the city, with more than 500,000 users. After accessing the native HarmonyOS, the application can promote collaborative linkage across departments, levels, regions, and fields, and is an important tool to improve the overall operational efficiency of the smart city.
In addition, for typical user pain point scenarios in the government affairs scenario, such as many service items, difficulty in finding service entrances, long business processing procedures, many links, deep entrances of high-frequency functional applications, and long business processing procedures with invisible progress, many native HarmonyOS version applications have also been optimized for user pain points.
Take the Guizhou Province Digital Government Affairs Service Platform "Duocaibao" as an example. If offline processing is required, the native HarmonyOS version of "Duocaibao" provides a one-stop solution: from online appointment to the push of nearby proximity recommendation cards, citizens can not only take numbers in advance, but also view the queuing situation in real time through the live window, reducing waiting time.
To address the problem of inconvenience in reading for the elderly, "Duocaibao" also integrates an AI reading control to clearly broadcast the complex processing procedures and the latest policies, improving the accessibility of government affairs services. With the support of HarmonyOS, the service not only improves efficiency, but also makes digital government affairs truly convenient, inclusive, and helps users get rid of complications.
Under the influence of these typical applications, thousands of government and enterprise office applications have already started the adaptation and development of the native HarmonyOS and will be launched one after another. When a smoother and more efficient cross-device collaborative experience emerges, it is more natural for more applications and users to join the native HarmonyOS ecology.
Ecology Sprint, Entering the Flywheel Cycle
With the gradual expansion of its influence, the construction of the native HarmonyOS ecology is entering the "flywheel cycle". Multiple local governments and industry enterprises have joined the HarmonyOS ecology, promoting its wide application in digital scenarios. Taking Shenzhen as an example, the "Action Plan for 2024" proposes to achieve the number of native HarmonyOS applications accounting for more than 10% of the country within the year. This not only accelerates the ecological expansion but also provides policy support for enterprises to seize the digital opportunities.
Currently, the native HarmonyOS system is accelerating the attraction of government and enterprise office applications to land. Many provinces and cities have actively joined or are promoting the construction of the native HarmonyOS ecology. A large number of government affairs applications that serve people's livelihoods, such as "Suishenban" in Shanghai, "Yukuai Ban" in Chongqing, and "Minzhengtong" in Fujian, have greatly improved the user experience, and at the same time provided a development template for the government affairs services of other provinces and cities.
At the same time, the influence of the HarmonyOS ecology is penetrating into the fields of enterprise office and media. The "Kankan News" launched by Shanghai Media Group, and the related applications of Guangxi Radio and Television Station and Hebei Daily Group have fully realized the native HarmonyOS. These cooperations not only enrich the content types of the HarmonyOS ecology, but also promote the leapfrog improvement of the digitalization level of local media.
For enterprises, launching the native HarmonyOS version of government and enterprise office applications as early as possible means seizing the development opportunities in the information age. It is not only a strategic choice to enhance information security guarantees, but also a key measure to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises. Government and enterprise office applications are not only the demand of the user end, but also an important link in the industrial chain. These powerful policies will also further promote the coverage rate of the HarmonyOS system in the To B and To G markets.
The demand for digital transformation from a large number of enterprises and governments has driven the willingness of developers to adapt to the HarmonyOS ecology, further improving the application ecology of HarmonyOS. At the same time, the advent of the native HarmonyOS and the continuous improvement of the HarmonyOS ecology provide a huge potential space for the efficient operation and rapid growth of government and enterprise institutions, and also provide strong support for the independent innovation and upgrading development of China's information technology industry. With the addition of more applications, the flywheel of the HarmonyOS ecology will continue to rotate at an accelerated pace.
From application development to hardware upgrade, this positive cycle provides an important impetus for the upgrading of the entire information industry. With the continuous improvement and development of the HarmonyOS ecology, it will surely become an important helper for all walks of life in the digital transformation in the future, and will also win more discourse power and market share for China in the global technology competition.