Huawei Launches HarmonyOS 7 with Agent Framework, Xiaoyi

Huawei unveiled HarmonyOS 7 at a developer event in Dongguan four days after Apple confirmed Siri AI would not launch in China. The company said the new release restructures the operating system around an Intelligent Agent Framework 2.0, promotes its assistant Xiaoyi to a system-level agent and embeds updated OpenPangu 2.0 foundation models.

HarmonyOS 7 uses an “intent-as-service” design that Huawei says lets users complete multi-step tasks with a single natural-language command rather than switching between apps. Xiaoyi has been rebuilt from a voice assistant into an agent Huawei says can access more than 2,100 system-level capabilities and coordinate with over 2,000 third-party AI agents developed in its ecosystem.

Huawei presented OpenPangu 2.0 as the model family powering the update. The Pro variant has 505 billion parameters and the Flash variant 92 billion parameters, and both support 512,000-token context windows, according to the company. Huawei also announced plans for 30-billion-parameter on-device models for Kirin chips, expected by autumn 2026.

Huawei published benchmark figures that it says show a performance improvement of more than 15% over HarmonyOS 6.1 and a task execution rate above 90%. Those figures come from Huawei and have not been independently verified. HarmonyOS 7 is available in a developer beta; a stable consumer release is scheduled for this autumn.

On market share, Huawei cited figures showing HarmonyOS held 19% of China’s smartphone operating-system market in Q1 2026, compared with 16% for iOS and 65% for Android. Huawei said HarmonyOS first surpassed iOS in China in Q2 2025. The company also reported the platform now hosts more than 400,000 applications and services and described integrations with domestic partners such as Ctrip for travel planning and Ant Medical for health data analysis.

Huawei noted the agent network is largely anchored in the Chinese app ecosystem. The company has not provided a timetable for wider international rollout of HarmonyOS 7. The update adopts a Liquid Glass visual style similar to recent designs from other smartphone makers, while Huawei emphasized changes to system architecture and AI capabilities.

The company traces HarmonyOS’s development to 2019, when U.S. sanctions limited access to Google’s Android. Huawei reported that by January 2026 more than 90% of its devices were running the homegrown version of the operating system.

Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, described the release as a generational inflection point: “In 2019, HarmonyOS was born. In 2023, native HarmonyOS apps began. In 2026, HarmonyOS enters the Agent era.”