Huawei just completed its Huawei Developer Conference 2020 (Together) commenced from 10 September up to 12 September at SF World Cinema, Bangkok, Thailand sharing key updates on AppGallery and Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) Ecosystem. This includes AppGallery helping global brands and locally popular brands such as TomTom, Bolt, Emirates, Sberbank, and Kumu to achieve business success while working closely with partners to build three new global ecosystem cooperation labs and five new global developer service centers.
Mr. Wang Yanmin, President of Global Partnerships and Eco-Development at Huawei Consumer Business Group highlighted AppGallery’s achievements in the first three quarters of 2020, outlined the comprehensive support Huawei provides for its global partners and shared success stories to inspire developers.
He stated, “Despite increasing challenges, AppGallery and the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) ecosystem has continued to show progress this year, all thanks to our global partners. With this strong support and recognition, we will continue to invest in the ecosystem as we build one of the top three app distribution platforms in the world. We are confident that as we continue to work closely with our partners, we can help them to grow and achieve their business goals, especially for those locally popular names who are looking to expand into other global markets.”
In regards to the HMS Ecosystem, Zhang Ping’an, President of Consumer Cloud Service, Huawei Consumer Business Group delivered a keynote speech titled “Together, Let’s Play with HMS” highlighted its 2020 achievements while announced 1.8 million HMS registered developers HMS, doubling that of HDC.2019. He said, “HMS ecosystem is now the third-largest in the world, and HMS core achieved a tremendous improvement. Together with the many Huawei teams, we made the impossible possible within a year.”
AppGallery Highlights | Huawei Developer Conference 2020 (Together)
AppGallery and the HMS ecosystem continue to flourish in 2020
AppGallery now dedicates itself to meet the diverse needs of 490 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) in over 170 countries/regions. Within the first half of 2020, user app downloads reached 261 billion, underscoring the popularity growth of this app marketplace among users.
Currently, 1.8 million developers globally have joined the Huawei Mobile Services ecosystem and more than 96,000 applications have integrated with HMS Core worldwide, offering users even more unique experiences.
Meeting user need by bringing diversified local apps
An underlying priority for AppGallery is reaching the diverse needs of users across different regions and provide them with relevant and quality app services. AppGallery’s ‘Global + Local strategy’ is an innovative approach to app listing that provides consumers with an enhanced experience by focusing on popular local apps.
Some globally popular apps and services will always be the preferred choice for consumers around the world. With the support of influential global partners, Huawei’s ecosystem continues to grow, with partners such as Bolt, Deezer, Foodpanda, TomTom Go Navigation, LINE, Qwant, and Telegram joining AppGallery to make life more convenient for users.
Local developers are quickly realizing the wide-ranging benefits of listing with AppGallery as consumers also often prefer their own local apps and services too. In the Middle East & Africa, the favorite local messaging app Imo and the well-known online shopping platform noon shopping are available on AppGallery. In Europe, BBVA, one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and Allegro, a popular online shopping app has come on-board the AppGallery platform. In Latin America (LATAM), AppGallery has onboarded Bancolombia, one of the largest banks in LATAM, and Linio, the leading e-commerce marketplace. In the Asia Pacific, the popular travel booking app Agoda and Lazada, one of the top e-commerce sites are listed in AppGallery.
Developers are at the heart of Huawei’s innovation
Partners are joining AppGallery to utilize Huawei’s innovative technology and HMS core, enabling traditional sectors to fast-track digital transformation. Huawei’s fully open HMS Core helps accelerate app innovation and elevate user experience. With these capabilities and services, users will be able to enjoy the differentiated experience from apps, thus bringing more business opportunities to add developers as well.
Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia with more than 67 million active customers locally, partnered with AppGallery to launch its own Near field communication (NFC) contactless payment supported by HMS. Within 11 days, over 21 million users have downloaded the app with 3.2 million installations.
Separately, Grabjobs, a leading recruitment platform in Asia, is integrated with Caas Kit that allows the app to conduct in-app recruitment and interviews. Meanwhile, 3D facial recognition payment via PayBy supported by a Security kit makes payment securer. Sweet Selfie also managed to add super night mode and anti-shaking in its features list after integration with the Camera kit.
AppGallery’s full-spectrum support sees partners achieving business success
AppGallery provides full-spectrum operational support for developers worldwide and assists them to unlock new opportunities, such as cross-region operation and global exposure. To date, a number of partners from various regions have benefited from AppGallery.
TomTom, one of the world’s leading navigation brands, has both of its popular navigation apps TomTom Go Navigation and TomTom AmiGO listed on AppGallery. Through joint marketing efforts with Huawei, TomTom AmiGO saw 22 times growth in download rate; Bolt, a ride-hailing application saw an increase of 136 times in European and Africa downloads from week one to week thirteen; Kumu, a TV Livestream app from the Philippines, worked with AppGallery to launch a Mother’s Day campaign. In the first 15 days, there was a 220% increase in Kumu’s premium users, and its revenue grew more than 40 times.
Huawei also has extensive support to assist developers to explore business opportunities in China and other global markets, by providing relevant consulting service, localization and integration, marketing, and campaign services. A spokesperson from newly joint partner Emirates said: “It’s our pleasure to build a collaboration with Huawei in order to provide the best possible customer experience…The engaging tools that are available on the AppGallery can help us create closer bonds and experiences with more customers, especially in China, which is a significant market for us. The next phase of our collaboration will roll out soon and is aimed at benefitting passengers at every step of their journey, from trip planning to arrive at their destination.”
Since last year, Huawei has helped over 700 partners enter the Chinese market.
Huawei pledges to work more closely with developers and partners
Going forward, Huawei continues to expand developer services. Huawei is building three global ecosystem cooperation labs in Russia, Poland, and Germany to serve global developers and provide enablement, testing, and certification services. Five global developer service centers will also be established in Romania, Malaysia, Egypt, Mexico, and Russia, providing local services and platforms to help developers better grow and innovate.
Huawei has always and will continue to welcome global developers to join the HMS ecosystem. We believe that by working closely together, we can bring a better, smarter app experience to global consumers. After all, when tiny stars come together, they form a brighter constellation.
Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) Ecosystem Highlights | Huawei Developer Conference 2020 (Together)
HMS – The World’s Third Largest Ecosystem
As of September 2020, 96,000 global apps have integrated with HMS Core. HMS Apps continue to launch globally, with content apps such as HUAWEI Music, HUAWEI Video, HUAWEI Themes, HUAWEI Reader, and HUAWEI GameCenter taking centerstage in various countries and regions.
AppGallery now has 73,000 local apps, up from 6,000 last year, reaching 700 million users worldwide. Local apps and services continue to be on-boarded every day – in line with AppGallery’s ‘Global + Local’ strategy – bringing consumers an all-scenario experience. From January to August 2020, applications in AppGallery, the top 3 app store, have been distributed for 261 billion times.
Zhang stated, “Global sales of HMS mobile phones grow rapidly since May this year, and gain strong support from developers, partners, and especially global consumers. With that, we invite more developers and partners to join us actively, as we bring to life your innovations with our fully open capabilities, to benefit more consumers.”
HMS Introduces Five Basic Service Engines
Huawei introduced five basic service engines to global developers, including search, map, payment, browser, and ads.
HMS search engine is available in more than 170 countries and regions around the world. Offering an innovative and diverse search experience in over 20 vertical industries including app, sports, finance, and more, it supports more than 50 languages.
HMS map engine has collected more than 180 million pieces of POI information and open 11 capabilities such as route planning, drag-and-drop 3D scene layout, full-scene spatial computing capabilities, and precise AR walking navigation. Currently, more than 2,000 local apps have integrated with the HMS map engine.
HMS payment engine provides developers with global and localized mobile payment capabilities, helping developers to achieve business success. Since HDC 2019, the number of local applications integrated with IAP services has increased by 619%.
Huawei Browser provides intelligent, accurate, and high-quality web browsing services, as well as support for Quick App distribution.
Huawei Ads provides efficient traffic monetization services for developers, to achieve further commercial success. It provides efficient traffic monetization services for developers expanding into global markets. With over 3,100 global apps connected to Huawei Ads, global developers are accelerating their commercial success.
HMS Core 5.0: Let Every Innovation Come to Life
HMS Core 5.0 is officially announced to commercial use globally at HDC.2020, covering open capabilities in seven main areas including App Services, Graphics, Media, AI, Smart Device, Security, and Systems.
For Graphics, The Computer Graphics (CG) Kit provides open capabilities centered around GPU technology to support game developers with a high-performance rendering framework and a series of rendering plug-ins to improve game screen rendering efficiency. The Gaming app achieved close to 11% in both increases in average frame rate and reduction in average power consumption by integrating HMS Core’s Computer Graphics Kit.
In the AI area, ML Kit provides abundant text, speech, language, images, as well as face and body detection services to help developers build AI apps easily and efficiently. Currently, this feature is supported in six languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Apps integrated to ML Kit can easily cover all platforms and all devices.
Huawei officially launched its VR audio-visual platform, providing developers with a comprehensive technology platform to bring a subversive and innovative audio-visual experience to consumers.
In the meantime, Image Kit opens the capability of HUAWEI themes, provides animation effects, and a ready-made template, allowing developers to quickly produce creative content. Thousands of lines of code were required previously to achieve the effect, after integrated, only two or three lines of code are required, and easier to set simple parameters to achieve more brilliant creative effects.
Huawei provides global developers with a one-stop, highly efficient operation service through AppGallery Connect, which includes 68 services – an increase of 27 services since HDC 2019. The number of apps using AGC increased by 90%.
Huawei Mobile Services has set up 6 regional centers, 7 DigiX labs, with local tech experts and operation staff, to provide services for local developers and partners. Huawei empowers developers in every region to innovate and offers full support to help them bring their local innovations to the global stage, allowing the HMS ecosystem to flourish at the same time.
Zhang also stated, “Stars brighten the future. In the past year, we grew to the world’s third-largest ecosystem. We will continue to work with our developer stars from around the world to let the fire of innovation shine.”
