Huawei UK claims 5M Mobile Services users
by Manny PhamHuawei UK Consumer Business Group MD Anson Zhang (pictured) hailed the company’s recent efforts in attracting more users to its Mobile Services platform, and committed to continue its push with more investments.
Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) is a suite of products designed to offer consumers an alternative to Google’s offerings, now that the vendor has been banned from accessing Google’s Android apps and services by the US. It has been spurred into investing in its own software such as an app gallery, cloud and video services, as well as a mobile browser.
HMS has gained a million more users in the UK since January, with the total now standing at five million. Two million of this total used its Mobile Services app gallery to download apps, Zhang told Mobile World Live.
He claimed that “monthly active user rates have increased rapidly”.
In January, the vendor committed to invest £20 million ($24.7 million) into UK and Ireland app developers, to stoke interest in Huawei AppGallery and its own mobile operating system Harmony OS. Zhang said the company also increased R&D headcount at HQ “to support the faster development of Huawei AppGallery”.
Zhang said Huawei will “continually invest into Huawei AppGallery” as smartphones continue to be sold in European markets, adding app developers are now “more confident” to work with the vendor.
Ecosystem experience
He added the development of Mobile Services is part of Huawei’s overall strategy to leverage AI and 5G to create a seamless experience for end users, across multiple devices. This will in turn aid the company in achieving ambitions to become the largest global smartphone manufacturer by shipments.
“If we don’t have the capability to provide the ecosystem experience for end users it will be very hard for us to be number one in smartphones,” said Zhang.