Huawei Technologies reported a robust 22% year-over-year revenue increase for 2024, reaching 860 billion yuan ($118.27 billion), demonstrating remarkable resilience amid continued US-imposed trade restrictions. The Chinese tech giant's resurgence was primarily driven by its revitalized smartphone division, which captured 16% of China's domestic market share, overtaking Apple in regional sales. This achievement was notably accomplished by deploying domestically produced chipsets, marking a significant milestone for the company. In collaboration with Chinese SMIC, Huawei delivers in-house silicon solutions to integrate with HarmonyOS for complete vertical integration. The company's strategic diversification into automotive technology has emerged as a crucial growth vector, with its smart car solutions unit delivering autonomous driving software and specialized chips to Chinese EV manufacturers.

In parallel, Huawei's Ascend AI 910B/C platform recently announced compatibility with DeepSeek's R1 large language model and announced availability on Chinese AI cloud providers like SiliconFlow. Through a strategic partnership with AI infrastructure startup SiliconFlow, Huawei is enhancing its Ascend cloud service capabilities, further strengthening its competitive position in the global AI hardware market despite ongoing international trade challenges. Even if the company can't compete on performance versus the latest solutions from NVIDIA and AMD due to the lack of advanced manufacturing required for AI accelerators, it can compete on costs and deliver solutions that are typically much more competitive with the price/performance ratio. Huawei's Ascend AI solutions deliver modest performance. Still, the pricing makes AI model inference very cheap, with API costs of around one Yaun per million input tokens and four Yuan per one million output tokens on DeepSeek R1.

According to ChinaScope, an effort is currently underway to strengthen Huawei's HarmonyOS platform's presence. The local government of Shenzhen has unveiled an ambitious program aimed at supercharging the development of native applications for the operating system. The "Shenzhen Action Plan for Supporting the Development of Native HarmonyOS Open Source Applications in 2024" outlines several key goals to foster a more robust and competitive ecosystem around HarmonyOS. One primary objective is for Shenzhen-based HarmonyOS apps to account for over 10% of China's total by the end of 2024. To facilitate this, the city plans to establish at least two specialized industrial parks dedicated to HarmonyOS software development across various application domains.

Furthermore, the initiative calls for over 1,000 software companies in Shenzhen to obtain HarmonyOS development talent qualifications, underscoring the city's commitment to cultivating a skilled workforce for the platform. Perhaps most impressively, the action plan encourages eligible companies to ramp up their outsourcing services for HarmonyOS app development, with a lofty target of reaching 500,000 HarmonyOS developers. This would represent a significant influx of developer talent focused on the platform if achieved. The Shenzhen government's push aligns with China's broader strategy to reduce reliance on foreign technologies and promote the adoption of domestic alternatives like HarmonyOS. While initially launched by Huawei as a workaround for U.S. sanctions, HarmonyOS has since expanded to power many devices, including smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and TVs.