Earlier today we reported that the Chinese giant Huawei has said that it will soon replace Google Play Services with its own, in-house Huawei Mobile Services (or HMS). In fact, the company said in an interview with ET that HMS will be launched by the end of December. Well, Huawei has delivered on its promise and Huawei Mobile Services are reportedly now available in the beta version of its software in China.
Huawei Mobile Services is basically a set of tools for developers that will allow them to do things on Huawei phones that Google Play Services allows for on other Android phones. These things include among others, support for services such as accounts, payments, geolocation, and more. Since the US imposed ban on Huawei means the company can’t use Google’s proprietary software any longer, it had no choice but to replace Google’s services with those of its own making, and that’s exactly what HMS aims to do.
Huawei Mobile Services are now available for developers to test out, and in the same interview with ET, the CEO of Huawei and Honor in India said that the company is working with the top 150 applications in the country to bring HMS support to their apps. The company is also saying that it has allocated an investment budget of $1 billion for this undertaking, and will be offering incentives of up to $17,000 to get app developers to integrate HMS in their apps.
Whether HMS succeeds in getting off the ground globally depends considerably on how many apps add support for Huawei’s suite of mobile services, especially considering that Google’s Play Services are available on almost every other Android smartphone in the world, which gives developers more incentive to develop apps using Google’s services instead. There’s definitely an uphill battle ahead for Huawei, but it’s one that the company is bullish on winning. 2020 should be an exciting year.
