Huawei Now Asking Developers to Make Android Apps For Its Phones

The Chinese company wants developers to make apps for its own mobile apps store from now on.

Huawei sells devices like the P20 Pro in India and other countries outside of China.

(Photo: The Quint)

Huawei is planning for a life without the support from Google for Android in the months to come, after an executive order was put by the US government.

The Chinese technology giant is reportedly connecting with developers across the globe, asking them to make apps for its own app stores, that are running on Huawei/Honor devices.

According to report on XDA Developers, people are getting mails on behalf of Huawei, justifying them the benefits of making apps for Huawei mobile devices in the West that are running Google-centric services on Android.

The appeal made by Huawei to the developer community comes at a time when Google has been restricted from offering its services to the company. Facebook was the last to join the banned list, as it decided that new Huawei phones will not be able to access WhatsApp, Instagram and even Facebook from here on.

The mail, shared by one of the anonymous sender with the publication points to Huawei having a developer community 560,000 people. It also says that Huawei has shipped over 350 million smartphones outside of China in the past two years.

Taking its communication forward, Huawei promises to support the developers, help them in publishing apps on its AppGallery.

Compared to the billion Android users available through Google, Huawei will find it hard to convince developers to build native apps for its ecosystem as well. Also, Google is likely to make things harder for the developers to shift focus on two different Android platforms. Amazon tried this before and never managed to break the Android stranglehold that Google has built over the years. 

Huawei continues to sell its devices across the globe, including India, but other than the 90-day deadline set for all existing Huawei devices to be supported, the Chinese company hasn’t shared a broader road map for its upcoming software ecosystem.

The company’s sub-brand Honor launched a slew of devices for the Indian market on Tuesday, without giving clarity on how Android support will be offered to these phones.

It’s said to be working on a new mobile platform code named ArkOS but we’re unlikely to see it on a device before early 2020.

Either ways, the Huawei-US battle is likely to go on for a while, unless China intervenes and gets the US government to rollback its ban on Huawei anytime soon.