Chinese manufacturer is forced to give up Google apps and services due to Trump’s ban. To get around the problem invests 1 billion
The new top-of-the-line smartphones Huawei Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro have finally been unveiled by the Chinese company and, as expected, they do not integrate Google services. So it comes true what everyone feared: the ban of Donald Trump has forced the Chinese company to fall back on its own software, creating more than one problem for users.
The so-called “Google Play Services” are services, code that runs in the background of all Android smartphones, which serve to manage many features now indispensable. Such as app push notifications, linking apps to Google Maps or YouTube. Instead of Google Play Services, which were unusable due to the ban, Huawei had to opt for its Huawei Mobile Services. Which have existed since before the ban, but which still few developers use in their apps because they only work on Huawei devices, unlike Google’s services which are universal and work on all smartphones running Android.
What changes for users
Replacing Google Play Services with Huawei Mobile Services is not painless for the user. Huawei’s services offer more or less the same functionality as Google’s, and when used by apps, in theory the user might not even notice the difference. But the apps that use these services are still few, so the difference is there and you can see it: the functionality of many apps is reduced, because the app looks for a certain Google service, but doesn’t find it.
Huawei’s plan
The solution to the problem, then, is mainly on the developer side: if the app writers add the code needed to interact with Huawei Mobile Services then the user experience with the app is not limited. Huawei has decided to “stimulate” the developers to do it with a huge plan of economic incentives: the HMS Ecosystem Incentive Program.
The value of the plan is 1 billion dollars, a bloodletting for Huawei, but a necessary bloodletting. Also part of the plan is an increase in money turned over by Huawei to developers of apps that will be published on the AppGallery store (Huawei, due to the ban, can’t even install the Play Store on its new smartphones). The creator of an app published on AppGallery will take 85% of what the user paid, compared to 70% shot by Google to developers who publish apps on the Play Store.