WEB SUMMIT 21: Huawei Hosts Developer Conference Announcing Vision of Open and Collaborative HMS Ecosystem

• Q3 figures show big gains in Huawei's ecosystem growth
• Global conference welcomes 300+ developers
• New updates for Petal Maps and Search

LISBON, Portugal, Nov. 5, 2021 /CNW/ - HUAWEI Mobile Services (HMS), part of the world leading technology company Huawei, kicked off its annual flagship Developer Conference (HDC.Europe) today at the Web Summit 21. The gathering of over 300+ developers and business leaders discussed HUAWEI Mobile Services' recent business developments, exciting services updates and growing support for innovation in the industry.

Industry leading ecosystem
In its opening session Huawei has announced the latest Q3 ecosystem growth figures confirming the development of HMS is well on track and expands at pace. The company has seen all key growth indicators surge, including an overall volume of apps, registered developers and monthly active users (MAUs), reaffirming its position as the third largest global mobile ecosystem.

Huawei is now helping 5.1 million registered developers connect with over 730 million device MAUs around the world; the number of applications integrated with HMS core has risen by 81% year-on-year to 173,000 and in the first three quarters of this year, AppGallery saw over 332.2 billion app distributions worldwide, an annual increase of 13%.

Since its global launch in 2018, HUAWEI AppGallery has reached over 560 million global MAUs, including 42 million in Europe. Huawei has also seen large gains in its own suite of core HMS apps with HUAWEI Petal Maps now at 7m monthly active users in Europe and HUAWEI Petal Search with 32m MAUs worldwide and more than 3000 partners now actively involved in listings across 20 categories. The revenue share to partners also increased by 62% in comparison to last year.

Jervis Su, Vice President of Mobile Services, Huawei Consumer Business Group commented, "Innovation is key to building ecosystems of the future and Huawei is committed to bringing together our capabilities with the powerful minds of developers, to accelerate our journey towards an interconnected, all-scenario future."

Petal family, evolving for consumer needs
The popular Petal app series including Petal Search, Petal Maps and Petal Assistant are being constantly enhanced by partnerships in vertical sectors such as travel, shopping and 'nearby'. At the conference delegates were updated on Petal Search 2.0, the next-generation AI multi-modal search engine, which will offer an innovative search experience in over 20 different industries including news, videos, shopping, flights, local businesses and more. With Search as a Service, Huawei will expand Petal Search capabilities through the device-side SDK and cloud-side APIs, enabling ecosystem partners to quickly provide the optimal mobile app search experience. With an average of 8 billion searches per day, Petal Search allows partners to efficiently distribute content to users through Huawei's proprietary UniBox platform.

From a travel perspective, Petal Maps, which is available in over 166 countries and regions, and was also recently the recipient of a prestigious Red Dot Design Award, now has an estimated 20m global MAUs. The latest Petal Maps upgrade will see the platform equipped with even more capabilities, including high-precision positioning, topographic map display, diversified map interactive experiences, in-depth data search, high-quality lane-level guidance and Map Studio. All of which ultimately provide the end user with a truly interactive and informative navigational experience.

Huawei Ads, an agency conscious partnership program across Europe
HUAWEI Ads is a real time advertising marketplace tailored for HUAWEI devices. It is now open to media agencies and app publishers worldwide. The platform also includes HUAWEI Ads publisher services, allowing developers to integrate HUAWEI Ads kit and generate additional revenue from their apps.

HUAWEI Ads gives advertisers the ability to choose placements across the HUAWEI ecosystem including direct placements on devices, custom placements on AppGallery, as well as new search ads on Petal Search and display ads across HUAWEI apps and thousands of third-party apps. Tools like Smart Bidding and Smart Banner, along with one click installation links, give advertisers increased controls and production capabilities to maximize their return on investment.

Since its launch in January 2020, HUAWEI Ads's daily traffic has reached over 600M in Europe, and has also been listed as one of the fastest growing platforms in Europe according to AppsFlyer's latest report.

HUAWEI Ads also offers partners an incentive program, including a free trial amount, early bird incentives and premium on-device media resources for direct advertisers and certified agencies in Europe.

New kits to support developer creativity
Also announced at Web Summit were the newly launched HMS Core 6 developer kits to support the creation of more competitive functions for apps – a total of 69 Kits and 21,738 APIs. The full range of HMS Core capabilities will empower developers to create quality apps with its intelligence, contextual and scenario-based solutions across multiple smart devices including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, wearables and audio products. These open capabilities can also be used to create apps running on Android, HarmonyOS and iOS by using cross-platform development frameworks such as React Native and Cordova.

Huawei reaffirmed its commitment to the spirit of cooperation across all areas of technical innovation by announcing multiple support programs that will be offered in Europe to individual developers like the Huawei Student Developer (HSD) and Huawei Developer Group (HDG), etc. These communities thrive on sharing knowledge of emerging technologies and seek to support fellow developers in their creation of new and innovative apps.

New partnerships
2021 has seen Huawei develop existing and new partnerships with leading brands. At the HDC.Europe event, they showcased their visions and thought leadership in a series of workshops covering all-scenario application innovation.

"We welcome our new partners and also look forward to working even closer with our existing partners", says Dr. Jaime Gonzalo, Vice President of Mobile Services Europe, Huawei Consumer Business Group. "These alliances create completely new exciting and personalized services and offer unique premium local experiences. Together with our partners, we continue to build an open and intelligent ecosystem that will better connect the world."

During the workshops partners outlined their cooperation plans for distributing exclusive content and services to Huawei users. The topics covered the evolving range of apps & services within the Huawei Mobile Services ecosystem, from e-commerce & transportation integration with Petal Search and Maps (iTaxi, Awin, Dott), mobile payment (Curve, Lydia), health (Runtastic, Fifty), AppGallery & HMS Core innovation (Joom, Vimage, Goodgame) and HUAWEI Ads cooperation (NYBA Media, App Samurai and HAVAS Portugal).

Notes to editor:

• *Q3 2021 data:
• HUAWEI AppGallery (MAUs: global 560M; 42M in Europe)
• Browser (MAUs: global 380M; 9.2M in Europe)
• Cloud (MAUs: global: 330M; 30.7M in Europe)
• Themes (MAUs: global: 120M; 7.9M in Europe)
• Petal Maps (MAUs: global: 20M; 7M in Europe)
• Music (MAUs: global 210M; 10.3M in Europe)
• Video (MAUs: global 230M; 14.3M in Europe)
• Assistant (MAUs: global: 360M; 17.6M Europe)
• Petal Search (MAUs: global 32M; 5.3M in Europe)    

The third largest mobile ecosystem in the world (Q3 2021 data):

• 5.1M+ Registered developers (+155% YoY)
• 173K+ HMS Core integrated apps (+81% YoY)
• 560M+ AppGallery global MAU (+12% YoY)
• 332.2B+ App Distributions in Q1 – Q3 2021 (+13% YoY)

Petal Search

• 3000+ partners
• 20+ verticals
• 550M+ E-commerce SKU

Petal Maps

• 400+ partners
• 260M+ POI
• 9.7M+ Portal Address

HUAWEI Ads

• 150+ Industry Advertiser
• 33K+ Ads Kit Integrated Apps
• 10 times inventory growth

*Q3 2021 data

*Taking part in Huawei's developer and growth sessions at Web Summit 21 were: Vimage, Joom, Curve, Runtastic, Fifty, Dott.pt, Good Game, Lydia, AWIN, App Samurai, NYBA.

About HUAWEI Consumer BG
Huawei's products and services are available in more than 170 countries and are used by a third of the world's population. Fourteen R&D centres have been set up in Germany, Sweden, Russia, India and China. HUAWEI Consumer BG is one of HUAWEI's three business units and covers smartphones, PC and tablets, wearables and cloud services, etc. HUAWEI's global network is built on almost 30 years of expertise in the telecom industry and is dedicated to delivering the latest technological advances to consumers around the world.

For more information, please visit https://www.huawei.com/en 

About AppGallery
HUAWEI's official app store, the HUAWEI AppGallery, provides users of HUAWEI devices with a simple and secure platform to search, install and use a wide variety of apps. The HUAWEI AppGallery enables easy installation of apps and convenient management for users. HUAWEI continuously develops its HUAWEI AppGallery with great effort. In this way, the company ensures that users always find directly what they really need. HUAWEI's exclusive service has a professional, fourfold security system to ensure that privacy is protected all around. The system reliably detects harmful behaviour and is consistently scanned for potential security risks. It also manually checks the security of real names and devices, and authenticates real environments to guarantee the security of all apps at all times. In addition, the HUAWEI AppGallery always offers lucrative discounts and VIP privileges for HUAWEI users.

SOURCE Huawei Consumer Business Group