In 2024, a lot has happened to curtail the Apple and Google mobile app monopolies and mobile app developers are exploring exciting opportunities beyond the Google and Apple ecosystems. This blog presents a roundup of some of the key initiatives and how they may evolve in 2025.
It used to be that you just paid your developer dues to Google and Apple and they took care of distributing your app via their respective app stores. Now, however, things look very different. Developers realize they are in an expensive stranglehold and are finding regulators are ready to break up the duopoly. Meanwhile, HarmonyOS is becoming a serious challenger and spawning various open-source and cross-platform efforts. Huawei is still viewed with deep suspicion in the USA but if you plan to deploy apps in mainland China, you will need to be aware of these efforts. Let's take a deeper look.
The US restrictions on Huawei played a crucial role in driving the company to create HarmonyOS. In May 2019, the US government imposed a ban on Huawei, citing national security concerns. This ban prevented American companies from supplying new Huawei devices with Google's version of Android OS and actually barred Huawei from accessing Google services and technologies.
Faced with these challenges, Huawei quickly introduced HarmonyOS in August 2019, just months after the US ban was implemented. Huawei announced their intent to create a self-sufficient ecosystem of mobile applications, similar to those built around iOS and Android. The new version of HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS NEXT, launched in 2024, only supports native apps via Ark Compiler and native APIs and finalizes the split with Android: it will not be able to run Android APK apps natively.
New Harmony based devices have seen a remarkable recovery of Huawei as a smartphone vendor: 2024 marked the year that Huawei pushed Apple into 3rd place in the Chinese market and there is a lot of momentum around the Harmony developer ecosystem in 2024, primarily in China.
As we have previously reported, Apple and Google have been bundling “good enough” security in a highly proprietary way and hiding the cost within the fees charged to developers to be part of the ecosystem. For these players, locking in developers (and maintaining the developer revenue stream) often seems to be an objective which is equal in importance to keeping users safe.
However regulators around the world have been busy, shining a light on these practices, and Epic Games and the Coalition for App Fairness have been actively pursuing Google and Apple in the courts.
Regulations such as the EU’s DMA (Digital Markets Act), the UK’s DMCC (Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024), and Japan’s SSCPA (Smartphone Act) are forcing these tech giants to permit alternative app stores and sideloaded apps and are challenging monopolistic behavior. The proprietary security solutions from Apple, Google and Huawei do not work for sideloaded apps or alternative app stores. Apple's response to the EU DMA triggered the EU finding them in breach of the act and subject to a large fine.
Epic Games won their lawsuit to force Google to allow more options to download apps and other ways to pay for transactions within them.
It's hard not to conclude that the pressure on Google and Apple will continue in 2025 and developers will be wise to plan accordingly. The good news is there are plenty of alternatives out there.
Lets summarize some overall things to watch for in 2025.
HarmonyOS Next: Huawei's HarmonyOS Next is revolutionizing mobile app development with deeper AI integration, expanded IoT connectivity, and enhanced machine learning capabilities. Although starting far behind iOS and Android, it offers a robust framework and roadmap for developers. Huawei has launched DevEco Studio which is intended to allow developers to develop and migrate across multiple devices.
Open-Source Projects: Similar to the way the commercial Android offering is built on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), HarmonyOS is built on an open source project called Open Harmony. Huawei no longer controls OpenHarmony, having gifted its source code to a non-profit called the OpenAtom Foundation in 2020. Just as there is a proliferation of open source OS and projects built on AOSP, we see the same thing happening with OpenHarmony. We will look more closely at OpenHarmony in a later section.
Cross-Platform Frameworks: 2024 has seen increasing adoption of these tools creating natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. We covered the status and security of various Cross-Platform development efforts in a previous blog. Flutter and React Native lead the field in 2024 but there are emerging initiatives which more openly embrace the Harmony ecosystem
IoT Initiatives: The integration of IoT with mobile apps is expanding, allowing for greater connectivity and control of smart devices. Google has abandoned their IoT targeted Android Things initiative. On the other hand, there are a number of iOT focused efforts in the HarmonyOS ecosystem, and HarmonyOS may start with some advantages over Android with a small efficient microkernel footprint and seamless integration across different kinds of devices.
No-Code Development: Cloud-based no-code development platforms are simplifying app creation, with the likes of Gartner projecting that the majority of apps will be developed this way in 2025. We think this is unlikely: despite the emergence of several commercial platforms, use in the coming year will be limited to simple business apps and prototyping new ideas.
Application of Emerging Technologies: Of course AI is being applied to enhance user experience and will be used to speed development. There will also be some buzz around augmented and virtual reality being applied to UI, especially in gaming. Finally there is some talk of blockchain technology enabling highly decentralized apps.
A lot of the advances in the mobile app development landscape are happening outside the Google and Apple ecosystems, offering developers new avenues for innovation and growth.
OpenHarmony and Oniro are closely related but distinct open-source operating system projects. OpenHarmony is based on Huawei's HarmonyOS and was donated to the OpenAtom Foundation which now manages it. Oniro is a compatible implementation of OpenHarmony for the global market, managed by the Eclipse Foundation.
Huawei is of course a major backer of both initiatives. The OpenAtom Foundation is Chinese based, and supported by leading Chinese companies. It also has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and receives support from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). This may make it less palatable to European and US developers than the work of the European-based Eclipse Foundation, which has investment from the EU Horizon program and active contributions from European academic institutions and large companies.
Clearly, Oniro is seen as serving as the platform for third-party manufacturers in Western markets, while OpenHarmony China will cater to domestic manufacturers in China.
OpenHarmony aims to support a wide range of devices, from small IoT devices to smartphones. Version 4.1 was released in 2023, with version 5.0 (API 12) expected in Q4 2024. OpenHarmony serves as the foundation for Huawei's HarmonyOS Next and allows developers to access the source code to build applications across various devices, including smartphones, wearables, and IoT devices; the primary development tool for this is Huawei's DevEco Studio which provides the necessary SDKs and tools to create HarmonyOS apps.
OpenHarmony uses a multi-kernel architecture through its Kernel Abstract Layer (KAL) subsystem, which allows for flexibility in kernel selection based on device requirements. The main kernels used in OpenHarmony are Linux and LiteOS for embedded devices.
The KAL subsystem allows OpenHarmony to select appropriate kernels for different devices, ranging from small IoT devices with as little as 128 KB of memory to more powerful devices like smartphones and tablets.
What next for OpenHarmony? Huawei plans to have global users on pure HarmonyOS 5 (NEXT) in 2025, which will be a non-AOSP, OpenHarmony-based release, fully controlled by Huawei. These developments suggest a significant push towards global adoption and standardization of the OpenHarmony ecosystem in 2025, with a focus on unifying the platform across different markets and device types. There are a range of spinoff projects for special use-cases ranging from connected cars to satellites to keep an eye on.
Oniro is obviously intended to be the vehicle for the globalization of the Harmony ecosystem. The Eclipse Foundation states that they will initially focus on IoT and industrial IoT domains, with potential mobile applications in the future. Oniro applications are designed to run on OpenHarmony and other operating systems, ensuring broader compatibility. Oniro builds upon OpenHarmony, extending it with additional functionalities tailored for global markets. There are some advanced IoT capabilities and companies like Bosch are engaged: Oniro includes features like over-the-air updates, security features, and discovery and communication protocols tailored for IoT development. React Native support allows for seamless integration of existing applications and ecosystems, potentially easing the transition for developers familiar with this framework.
What next for Oniro? Expansion of technical capabilities and use cases and continued community growth are key focus areas going forward. 2025 will see the integration of Eclipse IoT Kanto for global IoT solutions.
None of the large players in cross-platform development have announced plans for HarmonyOS but here it can get a little confusing: As we mentioned, Oniro is implementing React Native support on their end, while the core React Native project has not yet embraced HarmonyOS or Oniro officially.
There is a new interesting development, again with the backing of Huawei but owned by the Linux Foundation Europe. Born out of a desire to reduce complexity and accelerate the development of mobile applications, five organisations in the mobile technology sector, including Futurewei, Squid, Meetkai, BharOS, and Amaze, have come together to form the Open Mobile Hub (OMH) project. This collaboration aims to address challenges associated with fragmented development environments and ensure consistent user experiences across all mobile devices.
OMH intends to develop a unified codebase to ensure that applications can be built and deployed across all mobile devices, regardless of the underlying OS platform. OMH is focused on releasing a series of SDKs including Login & Authentication SDK, Maps & Location SDK, Storage SDK, and Core Gradle Plugin. HarmonyOS support is also on the roadmap.
One of the most contentious issues for mobile app developers is the way that Google and Apple force users to use their own payment systems to monetize apps and for in app payments. Any app accepting in-app payments was prohibited from telling users that other payment options were available outside of the app. This is now changing due to the successful court case against Google by Epic Games and the EU DMA activities against Apple in Europe.
Google now permits developers to offer cheaper prices for non-Google billing systems and allows advertising of alternative billing systems within apps. In theory Apple in Europe should now allow developers distributing apps in the European Union to use alternative payment methods within their apps, meaning they can integrate third-party payment processors (PSPs) instead of solely relying on Apple's in-app purchase system, allowing users to pay for digital goods and services within the app using a different payment - however the way Apple has proposed doing this is still, at the time of writing, being contested by the EU.
Meanwhile alternative providers like Paypal, Stripe, Braintree and Xsolla are staying on the sidelines, but are certainly ready to embrace the opportunity.
There are open source initiatives to watch too. The Linux Foundation Europe (home of Oniro) has started the OpenWallet Foundation, aiming to foster innovation in digital wallet technology.
There are a lot of initiatives to track and hopefully this blog gives a useful summary of which the key ones are and how they are evolving. If your company has any plans for mainland China then the HarmonyOS ecosystem will be in your future, even if adoption of HarmonyOS turns out to be slower in other parts of the world. At Approov we are actively securing apps which will be deployed in mainland China on Huawei devices: we have a global perspective.
In addition, regulatory pressure on Apple, Google and to some extent Huawei, is revealing that the security solutions from these players in fact provide limited security in very restrictive use-cases. The limitations in ease of integration, regional applicability, dependency on proprietary infrastructure, performance impacts, and occasional detection inaccuracies must all be carefully considered by developers and security teams seeking to deploy robust but cost effective security for mobile apps and APIs. A better approach is to use a cross-platform vendor who always stays ahead of market developments and embraces new approaches and platforms.
Approov provides consistent protection for your apps and APIs across different clients and supports existing and emerging cross platform tools. We would very much like to share our experience of working with other app developers and help you navigate a path to better security as you evaluate your choices.
