Huawei is reportedly considering introducing fees for HarmonyOS in-app purchases, indicative of the development of the OS introduced by the China-based technology giant three months after the US sanctions.
According to Bloomberg, sources have revealed that Huawei is contemplating introducing fees for in-app purchases on its HarmonyOS, possibly at rates lower than those of iOS and Android. Previously, Huawei had opted not to charge for in-app purchases as a strategy to attract more developers and content providers.
If Huawei moves forward with these plans to charge developers, it would signal that HarmonyOS has reached a significant number of users and developers despite US sanctions that barred the company from using Android technologies.
According to Counterpoint, HarmonyOS's share in China's smartphone market grew from 8% in the first quarter of 2023 to 17% a year later, surpassing iOS's 16%, as the company mounted a comeback by launching its Mate 60 series. Counterpoint added that HarmonyOS's market share may continue to grow. Globally, HarmonyOS held a 4% share in the global smartphone market in the first quarter of 2024.
Huawei is expected to hold its developer conference HDC 2024 on July 21-23 in Dongguan, introducing upgraded HarmonyOS, Pangu LLM, Ascend AI Cloud Service, GaussDB, etc. Meanwhile, Huawei may release the HarmonyOS Next in September, a native HarmonyOS independent of the Android platform, by eliminating the Android Open Source Project code.
Huawei announced in April that the HarmonyOS ecosystem had expanded to over 4,000 native mobile applications. The company said in January that about 800 million devices, including smartphones, tablets, and wearables, were powered by HarmonyOS.
Source: Counterpoint, June 2024
