Huawei Mobile Services is set to grow its business presence in the country through a mutually-beneficial partner system with government, corporates, education institutions and developers.
“With our suite of apps, services, and developer support, we are ready to expand Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) in South Africa,” says Likun Zhao, vice-president of Huawei Consumer Business Group, Middle East & Africa. “Our platform provides a trusted, device-centric and interconnected eco-system that makes life easier for users, helping them to discover quality content while ensuring security and privacy.
“Additionally, we are focused on providing much-needed infrastructure, guidance and support to assist the country’s developer community.”
HMS is a suite of applications and services for Huawei’s eco-system that provides a smarter, faster and more seamless experience for users, with all the essential applications and tools that most smartphone users deem important.
Users of Huawei Mobile Services have access to apps and services such as the Huawei AppGallery, an app distribution platform that has an exclusive four-layer detection safety feature.
Before the app is published on AppGallery, this detection system prevents criminals from accessing confidential banking information by enabling privacy checks, identifying security vulnerabilities, scanning malicious behaviour and conducting manual real-name security checks.
Huawei ID is a key service that balances the trade-off between privacy and accessibility. With Huawei ID, users can access many apps with just one tap, which reduces information leaks attributable to multiple log-ins and insecure apps.
Another element of HMS is Huawei Music, an official one-stop music service that allows users to play and stream music, eliminating the need to download paid music streaming apps.
HMS also benefits from Huawei’s future-oriented approach to developing 5G cellular network technology in South Africa, which will take connectivity speeds to a higher and faster level. The 5G network provides fibre-like speeds without the installation complexities, time delays and cost of laying fibre in under-serviced areas in South Africa.
Huawei is partnering with Rain to roll out 5G.
HMS, together with Huawei third-party applications and services, form an HMS eco-system for more than 570-million users around the world, of which 15-million are in Africa. Moreover, HMS has 1,07-million registered developers, and has a presence in more than 170 countries.
The total number of global app downloads has reached 390-billion to date and the number of worldwide apps released on Huawei AppGallery since its launch globally in April 2018 is continuously increasing.
In addition to the HMS applications and services, Huawei will also run an incentivised programme called Shining-Star 2.0, which aims to empower a whole new eco-system of apps, services and the South African developer community and is set to encourage global developer innovation.
Huawei is investing $1-billion globally, to provide key support for app developers. The programme officially launches in South Africa on 21 November 2019 and aims to cover skills training and development, infrastructure and marketing support for developers.
Developers of HMS core capabilities and services only need to integrate the HMS development kit for them to use Huawei’s open capabilities. Huawei has also officially made 24 HMS Core services available, to provide developers with an intelligent eco-system that has open capabilities and quick access to the HMS eco-system.
Huawei Map Kit, which was originally introduced during the Huawei Developer Conference in August 2019, will also be available for developers, providing map capability options.