Huawei’s Richard Yu Details Strategic R&D Investments and HarmonyOS Expansion Amid Global Challenges

On September 29, 2026, Richard Yu, Executive Director, Chairman of the Investment Review Board, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group (BG), engaged with international journalists to discuss Huawei’s consumer business trajectory and the development of its HarmonyOS ecosystem.

Yu, who joined Huawei in 1993 when the company employed only a few hundred people, noted that Huawei now employs over 200,000 staff, with nearly half dedicated to research and development (R&D). He highlighted that from 2007 through the end of 2025, Huawei invested more than CNY1.8 trillion in R&D. Initially, the company reinvested approximately 10% of annual revenue into R&D, a figure that has recently increased to over 20%.

This sustained investment has focused on core ICT technologies and foundational research, resulting in robust intellectual property assets and a broad patent portfolio. Yu stressed that these efforts have enabled Huawei to achieve significant technological breakthroughs, particularly as the global economy transitions into the AI era, which demands even greater innovation and investment.

Reflecting on his career, Yu recounted his early work on Huawei’s first-generation program-controlled switch and his role in establishing the company’s wireless communications business starting with GSM technology. Over the past decade, he has primarily overseen Huawei’s consumer business operations.

Huawei’s long-term vision centers on delivering a seamless AI life experience across five key scenarios: HIMA-powered Smart Travel, HarmonyOS Office, Smart Home, Fitness & Health, and Entertainment. This vision guides the company’s consumer business strategy for the next ten years.

Huawei has launched an extensive portfolio of products and solutions, including smartphones, PCs, tablets, wearables, true wireless stereo (TWS) audio devices, smart TVs, home routers, and smart home control systems. The company has also collaborated with partners to introduce intelligent electric vehicles. These offerings are underpinned by Huawei’s proprietary chip hardware platform and the HarmonyOS operating system, which supports smart devices across all scenarios. HarmonyOS represents Huawei’s third major OS ecosystem, alongside Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

Since its inception in 2019, HarmonyOS now powers over 90 million devices, with plans to reach 100 million by the end of 2026. The ecosystem leverages Huawei’s Ascend compute foundation, openPangu AI models, and the Celia assistant to advance AI capabilities across consumer, corporate, and telecommunications sectors. Although Huawei’s global smartphone market share has been constrained by geopolitical factors, the company maintains a strategic international presence through market-leading wearables, TWS earphones, customer premises equipment (CPE) connectivity devices, and an expanding lineup of HarmonyOS tablets, with cautious plans for global HarmonyOS expansion.

The recently launched Mate 90 series smartphones feature the Kirin 9050 Pro chip, delivering a 31% performance improvement over the previous generation. Key components—including the Balong modem, image sensor processor (ISP), mobile security processor (MSP), Lingxi CPU, Maleoon GPU, and the neural processing unit (NPU) based on Huawei’s Da Vinci AI architecture—are all internally designed. These components offer enhanced energy efficiency and improved system-level performance despite limited access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes.

A notable recent breakthrough is Huawei’s LogicFolding technology, unveiled in May 2026 by He Tingbo, head of Huawei’s Semiconductor Business Department. This innovation vertically stacks logic layers within chips and restructures circuit layouts using high-density inter-layer interconnects to shorten critical paths and reduce latency. LogicFolding technology has been implemented in the Kirin 9050 Pro chip.

When asked about international market potential and the impact of the Middle East conflict on Huawei’s consumer business, Yu identified strong consumer reception in the Middle East, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Europe, with a loyal user base across these regions.

He highlighted the popularity of Huawei’s wearables, particularly the HUAWEI Watch, praised for its health and fitness features. Yu personally uses the latest smartwatches capable of measuring blood pressure and assessing blood sugar risks. Huawei plans to launch innovative wearable products this year that provide direct blood glucose readings. Other favored products include earphones, tablets, and foldable and slab smartphones.