While Huawei saw considerable success in China in the wake of its Google license ban, the smartphone maker has seen a decline in sales in international markets. Despite the incredible hardware most Huawei and Honor phones offer, the lack of Google’s mobile services has made it an undesirable proposition. However, Huawei is attempting to build its own app ecosystem by luring developers with the promise of funding.
The Chinese tech giant recently provided more details about its new Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) at an event in London. During the event, Huawei announced an investment of around £20 million into app development industry in UK and Ireland with developers being able to claim up to £20,000 for any app uploaded to Huawei’s App Gallery.
Anson Zhang, MD of Huawei UK, said, “We have announced our £20 million investment plan to recognise and incentivise our partners so that we can build an outstanding ecosystem together.”
Jaime Gonzalo, Huawei's VP of European mobile services stressed that Huawei is attempting to build a more privacy-focused app ecosystem that will churn out fewer ads and notifications. Gonzalo said; “This is very good from a privacy perspective”. However, he also added that developers would be able to market their apps on home screens.
Huawei also claimed that HMS had seen strong initial growth in terms of numbers of developers signed up. Huawei also fired shots at Apple and Google, one of which mentioned that Huawei would only levy a 15-percent revenue cut from its developer as opposed to the 30-percent tax Google and Apple levies.
However, little was unveiled about HarmonyOS, Huawei’s backup operating system which could replace Android on Huawei and Honor phones if the company doesn’t get access to Google’s mobile services.
Huawei phones currently run on an open-source version of Android, but the company hasn’t confirmed when it would start replacing Android with HarmonyOS. A company executive recently suggested that HarmonyOS could be ready as early as mid-2020.
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