HarmonyOS Innovation Competition: Spur New Growth with New Scenarios and Experiences

Who will win the million-dollar prize in the developer competition?

In a technological competition about the future, what directions of industrial structural changes might be bred?

With the concentrated emergence of hundreds of innovative achievements, what explorations of new application paradigms and new growth paths by Chinese developers can we observe?

In this year's HarmonyOS Innovation Competition, we've noticed that it's a better choice for developers to create and innovate based on HarmonyOS.

This article delves into four highly representative winning cases: Cangyi: Chaos Effect, BabyBus, Migu Video, and Caiyun Weather. From the perspectives of rational business and technological change, it reveals how developers can achieve new growth by accessing HarmonyOS's new features and joining its new tracks, and find new ways out in the internet traffic dilemma.

Scenario Innovation: The "Fourth Space" Defined by Intelligent Cockpits

In the era of stock, finding increments often means opening up new physical spaces. For Jiang Lei, the producer behind "Cangyi: Chaos Effect" and the CEO of 91Act, HarmonyOS is not only an operating system but also a ticket to the next-generation computing platform - the intelligent cockpit.

Jiang Lei, CEO of 91Act and Producer of "Cangyi: Chaos Effect"

"In the early stage of the ecosystem, if we only consider the immediate ROI (Return on Investment), it doesn't make sense." Jiang Lei's company has just gone through a restructuring, and he has a deeper understanding of the value of perseverance. In his view, some businesses are "deals" to calculate pros and cons, while embracing HarmonyOS is a "cause." Therefore, he firmly chooses to "stand on the side of time."

Behind this long-termism is the huge imagination brought by HarmonyOS's scenario innovation. Most users will own multiple smart devices in the future, and only HarmonyOS provides a comprehensive solution for full-scenario transfer across multiple devices. This transfer breaks the fragmentation at the bottom layer of previous operating systems, allowing users to quickly enter the game scenario they were in on another device before.

Jiang Lei believes that this seamless transfer feature can create a next-generation interactive entertainment experience mode that "only HarmonyOS can provide," connecting fragmented devices and bringing a "qualitative improvement."

The intelligent cockpit is becoming a new traffic hub after PCs and mobile phones. Jiang Lei believes that the HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit is very likely to become a "dominant" operating system, which is a key point for the entire HarmonyOS ecosystem to break through the dilemma.

In his technological innovation concept, games are no longer limited to the screens in cubicles or on hands. The interior of a car is an extremely suitable environment for immersive entertainment, with surround sound, massage seats, mood lights, etc., which can bring an ultimate gaming experience and unprecedented opportunities. "When cross-device free transfer is possible, can my users purchase once and use across all devices?"

Jiang Lei's vision for the future of the in-vehicle scenario is to extend the closed in-vehicle entertainment to open outdoor immersive interaction. For example, using car headlights to project maps outdoors and using radar to capture players' body movements. For instance, in a camping scenario, the whole family can play motion-sensing games around the car. This scenario innovation based on the collaboration of hardware and software is an experience that traditional operating systems cannot match. Moreover, the HarmonyOS team has "strong technical strength" and "good cooperation," which enables Jiang Lei's team to quickly solve underlying functional problems.

Experience Innovation: Cross-Device Collaboration Improves the Full-Link Conversion Rate

While Cangyi is exploring future scenarios, BabyBus is working hard to solve current business pain points.

Children's education applications have long faced a classic problem: the users - children are on tablets, while the decision-makers - parents are on mobile phones. This separation between devices leads to a broken experience in core business processes such as payment and login. Parents often give up purchasing due to cumbersome operations, resulting in a waste of conversion rates.

BabyBus's answer is experience innovation. By using HarmonyOS's "multi-device transfer" and "tap-to-connect" functions, they have reconstructed the payment link: parents only need to tap their mobile phones on their children's tablets to authorize and complete the payment. This "boundaryless" interaction eliminates the existing experience islands, significantly shortens the payment link, and directly boosts the paid conversion rate.

Payment is just one aspect of HarmonyOS's cross-device innovation. HarmonyOS has distributed capabilities, enabling a boundaryless transfer experience from mobile phones, tablets, watches to smart screens, covering all smart devices in the family with content. This allows children to have a unified, coherent, and immersive entertainment and education experience across different devices.

"HarmonyOS's full-scenario coverage is the best path for us to maximize the value of our content." In the view of Zeng Weiqun, the person in charge of BabyBus's HarmonyOS technology, the key to current developer innovation is to break away from the traditional single-device development thinking and shift to "full-scenario, multi-device" distributed development, so as to provide the next generation with full-scenario, boundaryless, immersive, warm, and reliable digital content and services.

The surprises in the user experience are also reflected in many details. BabyBus uses the intention framework and service cards to achieve the "App-free" service. The application can actively recommend content on the desktop based on user habits, such as resuming from where they left off, allowing children with weak operation abilities to access services without barriers.

The continuous optimization of the front-end experience requires efficient support from back-end development. Zeng Weiqun revealed that thanks to the feature of ArkUI that allows one-time development and multi-device deployment, the team has achieved "one person doing the work of 1.5 people," significantly reducing the cost of maintaining multiple devices such as mobile phones and tablets. This makes him even more firmly believe that the trend of HarmonyOS is set.

Technological Innovation: Rebalancing Edge AI and Cost Structure

In today's era when AI large models are reshaping industries, computing power costs have become the Sword of Damocles hanging over video streaming platforms.

Niu Qilin, a senior front-end architect at Migu Video, has calculated that during popular sports events, if real-time video analysis, star player trajectory tracking, star player highlighting, etc. for millions of concurrent users all rely on the cloud, it will consume a huge amount of GPU resources, and the cost will be unbearable.

HarmonyOS's edge AI capabilities provide a technological innovation solution for Migu. Through in-depth cooperation with Huawei's Xiaoyi, Migu offloads high-load tasks such as "star player highlighting" and "event highlight generation" to the user's mobile phone for processing. This not only saves high cloud bandwidth and computing power costs but also effectively protects user privacy because "data does not leave the device."

The value of innovation lies not only in cost reduction but also in improving service efficiency for users. Through HarmonyOS service cards and Xiaoyi's intention recognition, users can directly access key services such as event schedules and star player highlights with just "one sentence." The number of operation steps is reduced by about 70%, achieving a transformation leap from "in-app search" to "system-level direct access."

What impressed Niu Qilin even more is the engineering efficiency revolution brought by HarmonyOS. "When we launched the HarmonyOS project, there were about fifty or sixty people in total, and in three months, we completed the workload that used to take three to five years on the Android/iOS platforms."

The efficiency miracle of "three months equal to five years" is due to HarmonyOS's unified development framework and efficient toolchain. "One-time development and multi-device deployment is definitely something that all internet companies dream of."

Efficiency Innovation: A Revolution in Development Efficiency with AI Assistance

In the business world, growth depends not only on scale but also on efficiency. Caiyun Weather, a global minute-level weather service platform with deep integration of "AI + meteorology," has acutely realized that HarmonyOS users show extremely high commercial value - rapid user growth and high willingness to pay.

To seize this high-net-worth dividend, Caiyun Weather must run faster than others. The development team of Caiyun Weather found that drawing the UI on HarmonyOS is very smooth, and the amount of code is much less compared to Android. It is also very convenient for layout and adapting to different screen sizes. The team has deeply used the HarmonyOS AI coding assistant CodeGenie. In links such as code review, API search, and code generation, AI assistance has increased the overall development efficiency by about 15%.

This productivity liberation brought by tool innovation allows small teams to pursue ultimate engineering aesthetics. Using ArkUI, they have achieved complex visual interactions such as naked-eye 3D with less code. In terms of multi-device and foldable screen adaptation, HarmonyOS is also "very convenient." In the HarmonyOS ecosystem, human resources are no longer a bottleneck for innovation but an accelerator.

The formation of commercial advantages depends not only on the efficiency of technological development but also on presenting a different experience to users. The interaction advantages of the HarmonyOS system have effectively improved the user conversion rate of Caiyun Weather. The one-click login function of HarmonyOS has a higher actual success rate than the market average for Caiyun Weather, effectively increasing the product's login rate.

The weather is unpredictable, but Caiyun Weather hopes to help users turn passive into active. Users are no longer passive recipients of notifications. Instead, they can clearly see the movement path of rain bands and the distribution of air pollution through the map module, truly "seeing" the weather and taking control of their itineraries.

In the tide of AI transformation, how the interfaces of apps will change is a topic that the Caiyun Weather team has been following. They believe that fixed interfaces will be gradually phased out, and flexible interface display forms will take their place. When users use their mobile phones, they can directly describe their needs, and let AI call different services to display the results. Currently, Caiyun Weather has accessed desktop service cards and will also access meta-services in the future, supporting direct data acquisition and display to users through Xiaoyi, further realizing an intention-driven interaction mode.

The Essence of the Innovation Competition: Co-Creating the Next-Generation Business Entrance

The value of the 2025 HarmonyOS Innovation Competition lies not only in the breakthroughs of leading cases but also in the vibrant vitality of the entire developer ecosystem behind them. These exciting innovation samples show how developers can open up the next-generation business entrance by joining the HarmonyOS ecosystem.

Sun Chenyang from Yuanxingkong, the winner of the special prize, performed a geek legend of "one person as an army" by developing an immersive universe exploration app that can span from kilometers to 93 billion light - years. This also makes many developers believe that with the power of innovation and the momentum of the platform, entrepreneurs can compete and win together with giants.

"It's not just about using some innovative capabilities of HarmonyOS. More importantly, these capabilities can help you better commercialize your products." Sun Chenyang, the developer of Yuanxingkong, revealed that on other platforms, calling TTS (Text-to-Speech) and large model tokens requires paying third - parties, with high costs. But on HarmonyOS, these are built - in capabilities at the system edge. Not only do you "spend no money," but also "if you earn 3 yuan on HarmonyOS, it's all pure profit, and you don't need to share it with third - parties. The overall gross profit margin is higher."

Sun Chenyang, the person in charge of Laocaimiao and from Yuanxingkong

Developers have mentioned many times that the HarmonyOS team has an unprecedented level of openness and response speed. Whether it's sending experts on - site or quickly summarizing problems into documents, this "co - creation" rather than "one - way management" model has established a deep trust bond between developers and the platform.

The "Yunting" team of China Media Group has witnessed real growth. They found that the daily active user curve on the HarmonyOS end is rising every day, and it doesn't divert data from the Android end, which means that HarmonyOS brings all "pure incremental users." By using Xiaoyi's photo recognition function, users can take a photo in a museum to evoke Yunting's explanation. Xiaoyi solves the "search" problem, and Yunting solves the "listening" problem, achieving precise traffic import.

(Right) Yang Menglin, Senior Product Manager of China Media Group's Yunting App (Left) Kaiwusha Aierken, Senior Channel Manager of China Media Group's Yunting App

The HarmonyOS Innovation Competition not only inherits the geek spirit and breaks boundaries through innovation but also brings real - money growth. The end of the 2025 HarmonyOS Innovation Competition marks that the HarmonyOS ecosystem has crossed the initial stage and entered the dividend period of value realization. When tens of thousands of geeks race on the innovation track, a next - generation business entrance driven by HarmonyOS system innovation has been grandly launched.

This article is from the WeChat official account