Huawei has continued with its push to build its own ecosystem without Google Mobile Services. As we’ve seen locally, the company is still launching smartphones that rely on their own Huawei Mobile Services. I’ve already said that the fact that they’ve introduced a couple of devices, and still have plans for more devices means that the reception by customers must be pretty good.
Now, the issue for many still remains how to find and install apps. Google apps and apps that rely on Google Services will still not work well, even if sideloaded. But for many people, there are other apps apart from Google’s that are very necessary. These may be reading apps, social apps, and many more. And Huawei has been trying to find ways to ensure the users can easily access these apps.
Huawei has continually assured us they’re trying their best to have all apps accessible through the App Gallery. And that, of course, will take a while. But with the recent introduction of many more important apps, it seems like the company is right on track. These are the new apps one can now easily get from the App Gallery:
- Deezer
- Telegram
- Zoom
- TikTok
- Tidal
- BBC News
- News UK bringing: The Sun, The Times, and talkSPORT
- Air companies including: Lufthansa, Emirates, Ryanair, Turkish Airlines, Latam Airlines
- Tinder
- Badoo
- Booking.com
- Skyscanner
Developers will definitely not let themselves lose customers. Having their apps accessible to many more people is important to them, and Google’s Ban is definitely hurting their reach. That’s why many of them are listing their apps on Huawei’s App Gallery already.
If an app isn’t on App Gallery, currently there’s a service called Petal Search – read my Huawei Y8p review – that allows you to search for any app, and quickly install it on your device. It even offers updates. The thing though is that it acts as a search engine looking for APKs from other third-party stores where the apps are listed.
To create this ecosystem or rather, to convince many people to buy their devices, Huawei is playing a price game – offering very good hardware for good prices. That’s why many of their recent launches are pretty competitive when compared to offerings from other companies. Of course, Huawei isn’t sacrificing much for these new devices as they’re rebranding most of them from other lineups that weren’t available locally. But slowly, they seem to be managing to stay afloat and building their own parallel ecosystem.
