Huawei Unveils HarmonyOS 7, Entering the "Agent Era" to Compete with Apple

Huawei Technologies unveiled HarmonyOS 7 on Friday, a major upgrade to its self-developed mobile operating system that the company said marks its entry into the “agent era”, as the Chinese technology giant ramps up competition with Apple’s latest iOS 27 software.

The new platform introduces an “agent-friendly” architecture and a significantly enhanced voice assistant capable of understanding context, remembering past interactions and connecting with more than 2,000 specialised AI agents, according to Richard Yu Chengdong, chairman of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, speaking at the company’s annual developer conference.

Huawei said the upgraded assistant can perform complex tasks autonomously. For example, it can generate personalised marathon training plans based on a user’s health data and calendar schedule, or remotely locate and send files stored on a connected laptop through HarmonyOS 7’s cross-device capabilities.

Yu also highlighted improvements to Huawei’s agent framework, which he said delivers a 90 per cent success rate on complex tasks while simplifying AI skill development for developers.

HarmonyOS 7 was released to developers on Friday as a beta version featuring AI coding agents. The operating system is expected to debut on Huawei’s next flagship smartphone, scheduled for launch later this year.

The update comes just days after Apple unveiled a major overhaul of Siri in iOS 27. However, Apple’s latest AI features remain unavailable in mainland China because of regulatory restrictions, creating an opportunity for domestic technology companies such as Huawei to attract users with locally developed AI services.