HarmonyOS PCs will support sideloading before the end of the year, and they’ve now passed 1 million shipped. Zhu Dongdong, who runs Huawei’s tablet and PC business, announced both at the company’s HarmonyOS office summit in Wuhan, IT Home reports from the floor.
Huawei’s store has been the only official way to get apps on these machines since the first models launched in May 2025. On a computer, that’s a hard limit.
Zhu said, in Chinese, that this is more than adding an install button: users get more flexible options within safe, controlled limits, and developers get a more efficient way to distribute apps. IT Home‘s report doesn’t spell out those limits, or what kinds of apps will install.
He first promised sideloading back in June 2025, at Huawei’s developer conference, saying it would wait until the features and security were ready and the user base had grown. A million machines later, it has a deadline.
That’s shipments, not sales, and it’s still a small number: Gartner counts about 55.4 million Windows, macOS and ChromeOS PCs shipped worldwide in the third quarter alone. Huawei’s count of standalone apps for these machines now tops 21,000.
Huawei’s first HarmonyOS desktops are the Qingyun HM650, for businesses, and the HM650g, for government offices. Both run on Huawei’s own Kirin chips, here the X90, with 10 cores and 20 threads at a 40W TDP, IT Home reports, and Huawei says the chip is cooled from both sides.
These are office boxes, down to the optional DVD-RW drive. One machine can hold two separate workspaces and switch between internal and outside networks, and Huawei calls it the first desktop certified as using 100% Chinese components. Zhu’s answer to doubters, in Chinese: take one apart.
Huawei is opening the platform to other PC makers too. Its partner program now centers on HarmonyOS Inside: five partners have built machines on a HarmonyOS motherboard, and the first machines are due on sale soon. It’s a page right out of Microsoft’s book.
Huawei Qingyun HM650 and HM650g key specs
- Processor: Kirin X90, 10 cores and 20 threads, 40W TDP, with a Da Vinci NPU
- Memory: LPDDR5; 16GB and 24GB versions
- Storage: one SSD (512GB among the options), plus one hard drive on some models; optional DVD-RW drive
- Front ports: USB-C, three USB-A (USB 3.2 Gen 1), 3.5mm headphone and mic combo jack
- Rear ports: four USB-A (USB 3.2 Gen 1), Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort, mic, audio-out and audio-in jacks
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6+ on some configurations, with Huawei’s own Wi-Fi chip
- Power: 180W rated output
- Software: HarmonyOS V1.0, the enterprise edition for HarmonyOS PCs
- Size and weight: 293mm high, 93mm wide, 315.5mm deep; about 3.6kg without an optical or hard drive
- Colors: black
- Other: internal PCIe x1 slot, wired keyboard and mouse in the box
Sales reportedly opened on October 15th to government and enterprise customers only, with nothing on e-commerce sites or in shops.
Huawei will start teasing its next HarmonyOS PC next week. Zhu describes it simply, in Chinese, as a disruptive new product.
