As early as in 1990, Professor Sun Yongsheng, suggested his students at Beijing Normal University to consider research problems on the unit sphere. Under his guidance and encouragement his students started the research on spherical harmonic analysis and approximation. In this paper, we incompletely introduce the main achievements in this area obtained by our group and relative researchers during recent 5 years (2001-2005).Fourier-Laplace series; smoothness and K-functionals; Kolmogorov and linear widths.