Number of daily users of Huawei and Honor smartphones is 470 million

EMUI, the skin that Huawei applies over the Android operating system, is actively used by at least 470 million people daily, according to the Chinese company. That means there are about 470 million users of Huawei and Honor smartphones.

The report on the number of daily users follows last year’s news that Huawei shipped 200 million smartphones in 2018. That number includes Honor devices. In 2017, that number was 153 million and in 2016 it was nearly 140 million. Huawei only supplies its devices with EMUI. The number of users of alternative interfaces such as Nova is unknown.

The EMUI usage figures were released at an EMUI press briefing in China by Wang Chenglu, president of the software division at Huawei’s consumer business group, according to GizChina. The interface is now available in 216 countries and in 77 different languages. According to Chenglu, the EMUI interface has seen tremendous growth since its introduction in 2012, which is of course a direct result of the increasing sales of Huawei’s smartphones and its Honor sub-brand.

During his presentation, the CEO of Huawei also discussed the most important innovations in EMUI over the years. He mentioned the introduction of GPU Turbo in EMUI 8.2, the Link Turbo feature in EMUI 9, and the improved file system plus the Huawei Ark compiler in EMUI 9.1, the most recent version of the interface.

For a year there have been rumors that Huawei would be working behind the scenes on its own mobile operating system, to replace Android. An own OS would come in handy, among other things, when American sanctions against Huawei no longer allow the sale of smartphones with Android. It is obvious that the look and feel of the proprietary operating system will be based on the EMUI interface. However, these are still only rumours; Huawei itself has not yet responded to the speculation.