Prohibited by the US from using Google, Huawei spends money appealing to app developers

In May 2019, the Trump administration put Huawei on a commercial blacklist, forcing U.S. companies to seek government permission before doing business with the company. As a result, Google has to revoke Huawei’s Android license on new devices.

Artwork: AP

This is considered a critical hit for Chinese companies because it means Huawei smartphones are not pre-installed with popular applications such as maps, Gmail, search, YouTube … Although Huawei phones are still popular in Western countries. , the reason they are so popular is that users can access popular services and applications.

Huawei launched Mate 30, the first flagship without the Google app in September 2019. The upcoming flagship, P40, does not have Google Mobile Services either. The solution that the company offers is to try to build its own ecosystem. They held a developer festival in London last week, announcing a $ 26 million investment for UK and Irish developers to write applications for Huawei App Gallery.

The company’s director also took the opportunity to “drown” rivals such as the App Store and Play Store. In particular, they mentioned that Huawei only took 15% of revenue from developers instead of 30% like Apple and Google. Programmers can market applications on the user’s home screen.

Currently, new Huawei phones are running open source Android. The company isn’t clear about replacing Android with Harmony, the self-developed operating system. Recently, however, an official suggested Harmony would be ready by mid 2020.

The number of apps on Huawei App Gallery is still modest compared to Google. Amazon, Snapchat, TikTok and Fornite are all present but lack many other familiar names.