Huawei AppGallery, which is one of the top three app marketplaces globally for smartphone applications, has marked several milestones in its ongoing development, one year on from revealing plans to expand its mobile ecosystem during the MWC in 2020.
- The platform has increased the number of registered developers to 2.3 million, up by 77% vs last year, and now also counts 300,000 developers outside China
- AppGallery’s global audience has grown to 530 million monthly active users (MAUs) and increased in Europe by 61.5% year-on-year to more than 42 million users
- 120,000 apps integrated with HMS Core are now available on AppGallery, a year-on-year increase of 118%
- The app platform also saw app distribution reach 384.4 billion in 2020, 174 billion more than the previous year
- Gaming is at the forefront of apps expansion, with over 500% more games now available on the platform compared to a year ago. Huawei customers are amongst some of the first to experience innovative new gameplay across the world, with last year’s launches including AFK Arena, Asphalt 9: Legends, Clash of Kings, and more.
The new figures come one year on from when Richard Yu, Executive Director and CEO of Huawei Consumer BG, unveiled Huawei’s vision to make AppGallery an open, innovative app distribution platform that is accessible to consumers around the world.
Commenting on Huawei’s ecosystem growth figures, Derek Yu, VP Huawei CEE & Nordic at Huawei Consumer BG, said: “Our AppGallery strategy has been to expand our user base to lay a solid foundation for the development of our ecosystem, and the growth figures indicate that the approach is working. Not only are we delivering new, locally relevant apps all the time, and providing our developer partners with exposure to an ever-growing audience, but we are also creating an unbeatable opportunity for success in the mobile apps market.”
Huawei’s AppGallery (CNW Group/Huawei Consumer Business Group)
The rapid growth of AppGallery has been boosted by the company’s investment as part of its efforts to grow the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) ecosystem. HMS now employs over 8000 R&D engineers and numbers more than 600 in its global technical support team. The result is that HMS Core integration apps have increased by 118% year on year to 120,000 and global quick app MAUs have grown a considerable 200% to 100 million.
“At the end of 2019, there were 25 countries around the world which had over a million AppGallery users. That number has now grown to 42 and we continue to see strong growth across markets in Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. It’s not just about quantity, but the fact that the number of apps integrated with HMS Core has more than doubled in one year shows that more developers are looking to Huawei’s on-device capabilities to drive innovation and provide better and more unique user experiences,” said Zhang Zhe, Director of Global Partnerships & Eco-Development Business Development at Huawei Consumer BG.
AppGallery’s “Global + Local” Strategy – Helping Local Developers Tap into a Global Platform
AppGallery has concentrated its efforts on working with developers on both a local and global scale to bring the most relevant apps to users, helping boost the number of developers working with the platform and delivering more choices to consumers around the world.
Developers are increasingly looking to AppGallery to reach local audiences as well as tapping into AppGallery’s growing global audience. Throughout the year, AppGallery has seen global applications from the likes of Moovit and Bolt in the transportation industry, Viber in the communications sector and other popular apps such as Booking.com, and Tidal onboard to its growing platform.
As part of this strategy, Huawei is also leveraging its expertise in China to help overseas developers tap into the country’s lucrative app market. Considered a ‘mobile-first’ society, China is home to over 904 million mobile internet users with an estimated app download figure of over 100 billion, and AppGallery has helped over thousand overseas developers to enter China’s mobile economy in the last 12 months.
Apps such as PicsArt have been among the first to benefit now boasting over 300 million downloads in Mainland China. FaceTune 2 and Mondly have seen similar successes, receiving 2.2 million and 350 thousand downloads respectively.
AppGallery has also helped over 10,000 Chinese apps enter overseas markets and diversify global users’ app experience. Popular platforms such as Banggood were able to benefit from Huawei’s unique position. Other examples of Chinese apps reaching global audiences through AppGallery include Pascal’s Wager, Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade, and Night of Full Moon.
