AppGallery, one of the top three app marketplaces globally, has seen several milestones in its ongoing development – one year on from revealing plans to expand its mobile ecosystem during the MWC in 2020. The platform now has 2.3 million registered developers, a 77% increase from last year, and a diverse global audience of 530 million MAU, demonstrating its growing influence on developers and mobile users around the world.
The platform also saw app distribution reach 384.4 billion in 2020, 174 billion more than the previous year. Gaming is at the forefront of this expansion, with over 500% more games now available on the platform compared to a year ago. Huawei customers are amongst some of the first to experience innovative new gameplay across the world, with launches from the past year including AFK Arena, Asphalt 9: Legends, Clash of Kings and many more.
The new figures come one year on from Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business, unveiling Huawei’s vision to be make AppGallery an open, innovative app distribution platform that is accessible to consumers around the world. Mr. Zhang Zhe, Director of Global Partnerships & Eco-Development Business Development at Huawei Consumer Business Group, said the numbers are proof of AppGallery’s ongoing progress as a truly global app marketplace: “At the end of 2019, there were 25 countries around world which had over a million AppGallery users. That number has now grown to 42 and we continue to see strong growth across markets in Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa.”
“It’s not just about quantity, and the fact that the number of apps integrated with HMS Core has more than doubled in one year shows that more developers are looking to Huawei’s on-device capabilities to drive innovation and provide better and more unique user experiences,” Said Mr. Zhang.
AppGallery’s “Global+ Local” Strategy – Helping Local Developers Utilise a Global Platform
AppGallery has concentrated its efforts in working with developers on both a local and global scale to bring the most relevant apps to users, helping boost the number of developers working with the platform and delivering more choices to consumers around the world.
Developers are increasingly looking to AppGallery to penetrate local audiences as well as tapping into AppGallery’s growing global audience. In turn, AppGallery can provide its diverse customer base with most relevant apps. Throughout the last year, AppGallery has seen global applications from the likes of HereWeGo and Bolt in the transportation industry, LINE and Viber in the communications sector and other popular apps such as Booking.com, Deezer and Qwant onboard to its growing platform.
As part of this strategy, Huawei is also leveraging its expertise in China to help developers around the world tap into the country’s lucrative app market. Considered a ‘mobile-first’ society, China is home to over 904 million mobile internet users with an estimated app download figure of over 100 billion, and AppGallery has helped over thousand overseas developers to penetrate the growing mobile economy in China in the last 12 months.
Apps such as PicsArt have been among the first to benefit from Huawei’s position in China’s mobile market; now boasting of over 300 million downloads in Mainland China. FaceTune 2 and Mondly have seen similar successes, receiving 2.2 million and 350s thousand downloads respectively.
Furthermore, AppGallery has also helped over 10,000 Chinese apps enter overseas markets to further diversify global users’ app experience. Popular platforms such as Banggood were able to benefit from Huawei’s unique position. One of the largest cross-border e-commerce service providers, Banggood worked with AppGallery through a joint marketing campaign and secured more than 60,000 new downloads and 1000 new first-time subscribers in three weeks. Other examples of Chinese apps reaching global audiences through AppGallery include Pascal’s Wager, Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade and Night of Full Moon.