Huawei’s Hongtu Plan Explained: OpenHarmony’s Route From Development to Commercial Scale

The Hongtu Plan is an ecosystem commercialization program initiated by the Global Intelligent IoT Consortium (GIIC) with Huawei’s support. Announced at the HarmonyOS Ecosystem Conference 2026 in Shenzhen on August 28, it targets a practical bottleneck in OpenHarmony’s expansion: getting products beyond compatibility demonstrations and into repeatable, high-volume deployment. 12

Its structure follows the product journey. Partners can receive support for developing foundational modules and development boards, get help with compatibility and connectivity testing, and earn additional incentives when qualifying products reach commercial-shipment thresholds. In other words, the plan is intended to connect development, certification and market scale rather than treating them as separate ecosystem problems. 34

What the Hongtu Plan is designed to fix

An operating-system ecosystem needs more than source code and developer interest. Device manufacturers also need dependable chips, modules, boards, operating-system vendors and tested reference designs that can shorten integration work. The Hongtu Plan therefore focuses heavily on the “base” solutions that other manufacturers can reuse.

That emphasis matters for OpenHarmony because modules and development boards sit between chip-level engineering and finished products. A broader supply of compatible, commercially viable base hardware can give device makers more starting points for products in areas such as smart appliances, cameras, connectivity equipment and industrial systems. The plan’s stated goal is to strengthen this foundation and accelerate OpenHarmony’s adoption across industries. 24

The timing also reflects the ecosystem’s reported growth. At the conference, Huawei said that native HarmonyOS applications had exceeded 100,000, that more than 400,000 apps were available on HarmonyOS phones, and that more than 80 million devices were running HarmonyOS 6 as of August 20. Huawei forecast more than 100 million users in the fourth quarter of 2026. These figures were company-reported and were not independently audited in the materials reviewed. 46

How the three incentives work

1. Development incentives for modules and boards

The development component is aimed at OpenHarmony modules and development boards for small systems and standard systems. A product must meet the plan’s recruitment requirements, pass OpenHarmony compatibility testing and satisfy commercial-shipment conditions in relevant devices before the reported development incentive can be claimed. 23

The announced amounts are:

• Small-system product: RMB 480,000 per eligible product
• Standard-system product: RMB 1.5 million per eligible product
• Annual limit: A partner may claim up to three products in each system category per year 2

The design directs funding toward reusable infrastructure rather than only finished consumer devices. That is significant because a module or development board can support multiple downstream products, potentially reducing repeated engineering work for device manufacturers.

2. Testing and certification incentives

The certification component is intended to reduce the cost and administrative friction of entering the ecosystem. It covers ecosystem partners including OpenHarmony modules and development boards, operating-system distributions and commercial devices. 3

The planned unified process is designed to let a partner submit a product once for three forms of testing:

1. OpenHarmony compatibility testing
2. GIIC Unified Connectivity testing
3. HarmonyOS Connect testing

The reported result is “one test, three certificates.” Organizers projected that the unified process would reduce testing time by more than 30% and testing costs by 30%. Coverage said the system was expected to launch by the end of September 2026. 13

This part of the plan is especially relevant to smaller suppliers. Repeated submissions, separate test procedures and corrective work can delay a product even after its underlying hardware is ready. The proposed process aims to consolidate those steps, while the testing subsidy lowers the direct cost of certification.

3. Commercial-shipment incentives

The final component links rewards to actual product volume. Qualifying modules and development boards must obtain OpenHarmony compatibility certification and reach the relevant cumulative shipment threshold. The reported schedule is: 23

• Lightweight-system products: 1 million units, followed by RMB 2 per unit
• Small-system products: 200,000 units, followed by RMB 8 per unit
• Standard-system products: 50,000 units, followed by RMB 30 per unit

The reported payout limits are RMB 4 million per partner in each system class and RMB 8 million in total per partner. These figures describe the announced incentive structure, not a guarantee that every participating product will qualify for payment. The reviewed material did not include a complete public rulebook covering every audit, shipment-verification, documentation or payment-timing requirement. 23

Who can participate?

The recruitment focus is broader than smartphone software. The plan targets companies with the ability and intention to develop and commercialize products in six areas: 23

• Short-range connectivity
• Cellular connectivity
• Lightweight intelligent devices
• IPC and video surveillance
• Media
• Industry applications

The program covers the wider chain of chips, modules, operating-system vendors and device manufacturers. Reports said that more than 20 core partners signed at the event and that more than 60 supply-chain companies announced participation. 7

Participation mechanics differ by incentive. Development and commercial incentives reportedly require a partner to submit an application and pass review, while the testing incentive does not require the same registration and approval process. 3

Examples from the OpenHarmony hardware push

Conference coverage highlighted industrial and hardware-oriented applications alongside the program. Hualong Xunda displayed an industrial HarmonyOS stack that included an intelligent programmable logic controller. Goke presented chip platforms for smart-home, vision and commercial-display applications; one vision solution was reported to bring AOV capability and more than 30 AI algorithms to OpenHarmony 5.1. 9

Separate coverage also identified Vanchip as an RF-front-end chip partner working on OpenHarmony-compatible RF modules and communication-sensing-computing chips. 8

These examples illustrate the intended direction: OpenHarmony is being positioned not only as a software platform for phones, but also as a foundation for connected hardware, industrial control, visual systems and specialized devices. The materials reviewed do not establish that every product displayed at the conference had already entered mass commercial shipment under the Hongtu Plan.

Why the focus on OpenHarmony matters

OpenHarmony is the open-source foundation associated with a range of device system types. Reference material describes lightweight systems as serving resource-constrained devices such as sensors and connectivity modules, small systems as supporting products such as cameras and routers, and standard systems as serving richer interactive devices. 3134

That range creates both an opportunity and a coordination challenge. A single ecosystem can address many device categories, but each category still needs suitable hardware, system adaptation, testing and commercial demand. The Hongtu Plan’s tiered incentives mirror those different system classes instead of applying one shipment target to every product.

The commercial logic is straightforward: subsidize the early engineering work, reduce certification friction, and reward products that achieve meaningful volume. Whether that becomes a self-sustaining ecosystem will depend on factors the announcement does not settle, including the quality of the supported products, the number of device makers that adopt them and the transparency of the final operating rules.

OpenHarmony’s next direction: smaller systems, broader interoperability and AI

The stated roadmap extends beyond simply adding more compatible devices. Reports describe plans to make the lightweight system smaller, strengthen small and standard systems, open additional system applications and software-development kits, and improve cross-device interoperability. 48

AI is part of that broader positioning. Industry demonstrations described OpenHarmony being combined with AI capabilities in industrial, visual and other connected-device scenarios. The direction is to use the operating system as a base for intelligent coordination among devices and industry systems, rather than limiting its role to a handset operating system. 940

That makes the Hongtu Plan strategically important even though its most concrete provisions are financial and procedural. Its success will be measured less by the announcement itself than by whether it produces a deeper catalog of reusable hardware solutions, faster certification and sustained commercial shipments.

The bottom line

The Hongtu Plan is best understood as an attempt to build a commercial loop for OpenHarmony:

fund foundational hardware → simplify testing → reward real shipments.

Its most specific promises are the reported RMB 480,000 and RMB 1.5 million development incentives, a unified testing process projected to cut time by more than 30% and cost by 30%, and tiered shipment rewards tied to 1 million, 200,000 or 50,000 units depending on system class. 23

The plan does not by itself prove that OpenHarmony has achieved broad industrial scale. It does show a shift in emphasis—from demonstrating technical compatibility to paying for the infrastructure and market adoption needed to make that compatibility commercially useful.