Huawei is actively negotiating with developers – hopes to bring PlayStore apps to Huawei AppGallery

Chinese manufacturing giant, Huawei, is having a hard time with its smartphone business. The major reason for this is that it can not use Google Mobile Services which means that its market outside China is seriously depreciating. As of now, Huawei has a couple of smartphones without GMS. The likes of Huawei Mate 30 series and Huawei P40 series flagships do not use Google’s services.

Since the Chinese manufacturer can not use GMS and PlayStore, it has been vigorously promoting its own ecosystem. Since last year, the company launched HMS mobile service and AppGallery. HMS and AppGallery is an alternative to GMS and PlayStore. However, these alternatives are far below what Google is offering thus it needs something better. According to recent reports, Huawei is actively negotiating with relevant developers to bring PlayStore apps to its AppGallery. If it can achieve this, then its smartphone business outside China will come alive again.

HMS was first announced at the HDC conference last year. At that time, there were 14 services, including 9 basic services and 5 growth services. However, as of now, it has about 24 services. This shows that HMS is developing really fast. Furthermore, the number of HMS ecosystem developers is also increasing rapidly. Within a few months, about 400,000 developers joined the ecosystem. It now has about 1.3 million developers. Huawei HMS covers more than 170 countries around the world with 400 million monthly active users. Its AppGallery app store has at least 55,000 applications.

Huawei needs a good alternative before HMS fully develops

For Huawei, HMS service and AppGallery application store will take time to improve. It seems that the company needs a viable alternative while it develops HMS. Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei’s consumer terminal business, also expressed similar ideas in an interview after the P40 conference. He said that Huawei still hopes to cooperate with Google so it can use the PlayStore. On Google’s part, it is actively trying to convince the US government to relax restrictions on Huawei’s use of PlayStore and GMS.