As 2025 comes to an end, it is the right time to look back at how the Oniro Working Group has evolved. If the first half of the year was about exploration and setting up our tools, the second half has been about putting those tools to the test.
We started the year with a clear mission: to be the transparent, European-governed bridge to the global OpenHarmony ecosystem. Today, we close the year with a stronger sense of direction and an evolving technical foundation. We are building something ambitious, and while the road ahead is challenging, we are well on our way.
This is the story of our 2025.
🏗️ Technical progress: building blocks for the future
The shift this year was about validation. We moved from planning to active development, prioritising continuous alignment and verifying our architecture on production-grade hardware.
📱 Hardware: The Road to the Volla Phone
One of our primary objectives is proving that Oniro can power consumer hardware. To that end, we have started the complex work of integrating Oniro into the Volla Phone X23. Adapting a multi-kernel OS to run on a production device using a mainline Linux kernel is a significant engineering challenge. We are working through the technical hurdles, and the lessons learned here are helping us build a more independent mobile alternative.
🔄 Alignment & the app ecosystem
Compatibility is not a one-time milestone; it is a continuous process. Throughout the year, our technical team has worked relentlessly to stay synchronised with upstream releases. We have currently updated our work to align with OpenHarmony 6.0 (API 20), ensuring that as the global platform evolves, Oniro evolves with it.
Simultaneously, we have been growing our application library through the Oniro4OpenHarmony project. We are moving beyond basic examples to explore more complex interactions, such as SuperDevice logic, validating the potential of distributed systems where devices share resources seamlessly.
🦀 Exploring new frameworks: Rust & Tauri
We are also exploring new horizons for developer tools. We have begun integrating Tauri, aiming to open the door for secure, memory-safe applications using Rust. This initiative aligns with our "secure by design" philosophy, with the goal of eventually enabling high-performance hybrid apps that combine the web frontend ecosystem with the robustness of a Rust backend.
🎓 Empowering developers: the Oniro tutorial series
To lower the barrier to entry, we launched the Oniro Tutorial Series, a comprehensive "Zero-to-Hero" curriculum designed to guide developers from their first setup to shipping real-world applications.
- From setup to code: the playlist covers essential workflows, including setting up DevEco Studio and the Oniro VS Code extension.
- Advanced scenarios: we went beyond the basics, teaching developers how to implement AI-assisted coding workflows and how to build wearable apps that access real sensor data.
- Best practices: the series also focuses on ArkTS/ArkUI patterns, ensuring our community learns to build scalable, high-quality applications from day one.
🌍 Event highlights: a year on the road
While development continued, our team traveled to key technology hubs across Europe.
During the first half of the year, we engaged with communities at major events like FOSDEM, RUSTWeek, App.js Conf, and two OpenHarmony Technical Forums, establishing our presence in the open-source world. You can read more about those early achievements in our previous article Oniro's Mid-Year update.
The second half of 2025 was equally active, allowing us to connect with diverse audiences and gather the feedback necessary to refine our strategy.
⚜️ OpenHarmony Technical Conference (Florence, September)
One of the most important moment of our year was the OpenHarmony Technical Conference in Florence. This event positioned Oniro as the "Global Gateway" for the ecosystem.
- The strategic vision: as our Chair Jarosław Marek highlighted in his recent article, Oniro represents a truly European approach to openness. It balances global scale with local trust, "shattering the mobile duopoly" by offering a platform that is secure, compliant, and locally accountable.
- Technical integration: we focused on concrete integrations with React Native, aiming to empower web developers to use their existing skills to build for Oniro.
- The impact: it was a pivotal moment where European partners saw the full scale of the ecosystem and the structured collaboration backing it.
🇪🇸 Huawei Connect Europe (Madrid, October)
In Madrid, we shifted our focus to the industrial market. Engaging with manufacturers and integrators in the Edge Computing and IoT spaces, we had interesting conversations and received valuable feedback on the need for a vendor-neutral OS that can handle device fragmentation while remaining compliant with EU regulations.
🇮🇹 SFSCON (Bolzano, November)
Our participation at the South Tyrol Free Software Conference was a key opportunity to reinforce our message.
- The Oniro vision: in our dedicated talks, Francesco Pham provided a technical overview of the project's evolution, while Ignacio Ahedo discussed how Oniro’s global collaboration model aims to mitigate device fragmentation.
- Hands-on experience: Pawel Mandes led a practical workshop, introducing developers to mobile app development on Oniro and demonstrating how accessible the platform is becoming.
- Strategic planning: we also held our first on-site Steering Committee meeting here, finalising the 2026 Program Plan and ensuring we enter the new year with clear alignment.
🇩🇪 hackaTUM (Munich, November)
In November, we brought the #OniroChallenge to hackaTUM. It was a magnificent experience for our team: our first-time ever participating in a hackathon of this scale.
We tasked students with using our smartwatch development kit to create real-time Health & Sport applications. The results were a powerful validation of our platform's potential. Seeing teams successfully build life-saving technology, such as real-time CPR guidance apps, in just 24 hours was inspiring. Given the success and energy, we are already looking forward to repeating this experience.
🇫🇷 Open Source Experience (Paris, December)
We concluded our tour in Paris at OSXP. Among the discussions at the Cité des Sciences, we focused on Digital Sovereignty. We engaged with the French open-source community on how a vendor-neutral OS provides the strategic independence European smart devices need. It was encouraging to see how many visitors were already familiar with our work, confirming that our message is reaching the right audience.
🚀 The path forward: key goals for 2026
With the lessons learned in 2025, the year ahead is about focus and formalisation. Based on the Program Plan approved by the Steering Committee, these are our top priorities:
📜 Specification v1.0: we will reactivate the Specification Committee to start working on release v1.0 of the Oniro Specification. This is the necessary first step toward a formal Compatibility Program, which will provide the trust commercial adopters need.
🛡️ CRA compliance: we aim to establish Oniro as a reference implementation for the Cyber Resilience Act, offering a "compliant-by-design" OS that simplifies the regulatory journey for European adopters.
🤝 Increasing collaboration: increasing our communication and deepening our cooperation with OpenHarmony, is key to ensure that our technical roadmap stays aligned and benefits from the global ecosystem's momentum.
🤖 AI integration: there's a plan to initiate and evaluate the impact of integrating multiple AI agents into Oniro, exploring how intelligent assistants can natively enhance the OS experience.
🌳 Expanding the ecosystem: in 2026, we will focus on specific vertical domains to create a clearer, more welcoming path for new companies to join the Working Group.
✨ A fresh identity: to better reflect our evolving scope and vision, we are planning a complete website refresh. We are also working on a new element to make the Oniro brand more recognisable and friendly to our community. Stay tuned for that reveal!
👥 A community effort
This year’s success would not have been possible without the dedication of our members, technical leads, and close friends. We extend our sincere gratitude to everyone who represented Oniro on stages across the world this year:
Jarosław Marek, Adrian O'Sullivan, Francesco Pham, Carlo Piana, Alberto Pianon, Luca Miotto, Daniel Thompson-Yvetot, Jasper Morgan, Przemysław Sosna, Kaj Grönholm, Marko Saukko, Dr. Liu Yang, Juan Rico, Pawel Mandes, Robert Radzki, Chen Song, and Ignacio Ahedo.
💭 Final thoughts
2025 was a year of building foundations. We aligned our roadmap, connected with the community, and started the difficult work of hardware integration.
We are proud of what we have achieved, but we remain humble before the task ahead. The bridge is being built, brick by brick, and we invite you to join us in 2026 to help lay the next stones.
Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year from the Oniro Team!
