Huawei announces its first device running Harmony OS, an Honor Vision smart TV launching on August 15
Companies that have traditionally been known for their smartphones are venturing into the smart TV business. Xiaomi has been in this game for some time now, while OnePlus is also gearing up to launch its own smart screen product.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Honor Vision looks like a TV launch, but it is the first shipping proof of HarmonyOS running across phones, watches, tablets, and screens — Huawei picked the big screen to debut an OS it intends to spread through its whole device lineup. The article also frames it as a phone-maker land grab: Xiaomi already sells smart TVs and OnePlus is prepping a smart screen, so Chinese smartphone brands are converging on the living room at once.
Seen against later coverage, the debut matters more than it seemed: HarmonyOS went on to power 16% of smartphones sold in China per Counterpoint's Q4 2023 tally, then HarmonyOS NEXT stripped out open-source Android code entirely, and by 2025 Huawei was putting the OS into laptops after its Windows license expired. The TV was the beachhead for an OS that now positions itself against iOS and Android.
First-order effects
- Honor Vision buyers get a TV running Huawei's own OS rather than Android-based TV software, making the August 15 launch the first real-world test of HarmonyOS outside demos.
Second-order effects
- Xiaomi, already selling smart TVs, faces a rival that controls both the hardware and the OS layer, while OnePlus's planned smart screen entry turns the living room into a three-way fight among Chinese phone brands.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — TV in 2019, phones, wearables, a fully self-developed NEXT without Android code, and a HarmonyOS laptop after the Windows license lapsed — device makers can run their own OS stacks end-to-end, shrinking the addressable base for Google's and Microsoft's platform businesses in the Chinese market.
The trend: Chinese phone makers are extending their own operating systems from handsets into every screen category, with Huawei's HarmonyOS evolving from a TV experiment into an Android-independent ecosystem.