It’s been 10 months since the U.S. blacklisted Huawei, cutting it off from the Google apps and services on which its smartphones relied. Without apps like Google Maps, YouTube and the Google Play store, Huawei’s new smartphones have been brilliant but far less useful for people outside of China.
But Huawei did not sit idly by while its competitors are taking its share of the international market. China’s largest smartphone brand is partnering with local players to find a way around the big American monopolies on apps.
This week, the company reportedly started talking to OSLabs, an Indian system application company that also manufactures Indus OS. Huawei is looking to work with the software company to create an Android app store that could appeal to the hundreds of millions of smartphone users in India.
The Indus OS app store, called App Bazaar, has more than 400,000 regional apps in local Indian languages. India is now the second largest smartphone market in the world, according to Counterpoint.
Huawei did not confirm the deal and declined to comment.
Similar moves by Huawei have been seen in Russia, where the company talks to local search engine provider Yandex. In August of last year, local media announced that Huawei is in negotiations to add Yandex’s voice assistant, Alisa, to its phones, as well as other Yandex apps for music, taxis and news.
But there are doubts that Huawei’s efforts will pay off. Kiranjeet Kaur, senior director of research at IDC, says that Indians, like the rest of the world, have developed a heavy dependence on Google applications.
“Local players, who lost market share in the Indian smartphone market, were targeting the lower end of the smartphone market at a time when many people had just started using smartphones,” said Kaur. .
Apps like YouTube have seen rapid adoption in India as data has become cheaper, according to Kaur. The same goes for Facebook apps like WhatsApp and Messenger, which are currently not available in Huawei’s app store, AppGallery.
The situation in Russia is different, but not because of user preferences. Huawei has found an opportunity in Russia due to government policies. According to Abhilash Kumar, an analyst at Counterpoint, Russia requires that smartphone manufacturers have local apps preinstalled to promote technological innovation in the country.
“The localization of the application and the merger of Huawei with Yandex Group make the overall scenario favorable for Huawei and we believe that Huawei will benefit from it,” said Kumar. Yandex is also a more popular search engine in Russia than Google, he added.
But Huawei isn’t just about partnerships. The company’s main weapon is AppGallery – its answer to Google Play – and Huawei Mobile Services (HMS), which is intended to replace Google Mobile Services (GMS).
Huawei’s new suite of apps and services is intended to replace some of the functionality Google provides to other apps. Uber, for example, incorporates Google Maps, which means that the carpool app isn’t very useful without Google services. In response, Huawei worked on its Map Kit, which is connected to local mapping services so that application developers can use it as a replacement.
To encourage developers to work with the company, Huawei has rolled out the “Shining-Star” program, which includes a $ 1 billion incentive fund. And Huawei contacted developers at developer conferences from Malaysia to South Africa. It has also allocated $ 50 million to stimulate the development of local applications in Latin America.
Huawei says its HMS ecosystem now has 600 million users in more than 170 countries and regions, and 1.3 million developers are registered with HMS. Most of the most popular apps are already available on Huawei phones, including Snapchat, Booking and Amazon. But many analysts don’t seem to be convinced that buyers around the world will attempt an ecosystem of alternative apps just to use Huawei phones.
“With the exception of China, there is no other country I can think of that can do without Google apps at this point,” said Kaur.