Chinese Mobile Companies to Develop a Play Store Competitor
The leading Chinese Mobile Companies; Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo are uniting together to develop a platform that will let developers outside of China upload their apps to all the respective app stores at once. According to the Reuters reports, the manufacturers have united under the Global Developer Service Alliance (GDSA). Definitely, this decision appears to be an attempt to challenge the universal supremacy of Google’s Play Store.
Due to the Google Play Store banned in China, Android users have become familiar to download apps from a variety of different app stores. Manufacturers like Huawei and Oppo have maintained many of these app stores. But outside of China, the Google Play Store is the king of all the Mobile Services. The reason is that the Play Store provides a suitable single location where developers easily upload their software.
Well, this near-monopoly means that third-party app stores have struggled with developer support internationally. And it is this advantage that can be challenged by the GDSA’s platform.
Reason of Chinese Mobile Companies to do so
To clarify, GDSA’s prototype website shows that its services are planned for nine countries and regions. The countries also include Malaysia, India, and Indonesia. The Chinese Mobile Companies are strong in different regions, such as Huawei in Europe and Xiaomi in India. But these companies altogether control over 40% of worldwide mobile phone shipments as of the Q4 2019. The new Mobile App platform will make it easier for developers to upload their apps to every store at once. And, will also ensure some degree of parity across other app stores.
Undoubtedly, Play Store’s universal supremacy is a much more serious problem for Huawei. It is so because Huawei lost its license to offer Google’s apps and services last year. Among the Google apps, the one which caused the most harm to the company is the Google Play Store. This Google Services ban created such a problem that Huawei decided to release against its last flagship, Mate 30, internationally.
Huawei has also announced that it’s working on its own operating system named Harmony OS. The company says that it is investing $1 billion to fund the development, user growth, and marketing of Huawei Mobile Services. Huawei Mobile Services is an alternative to Google’s Mobile Services.
Google Play Store’s Revenue
Consequently, the Play Store delivers a significant revenue stream for Google. Which means, it takes a 30% cut of any sales made through the store. According to a Reuter’s analyst, Play Store provided Google with around $8.8 billion worldwide last year. Chinese Mobile companies need at least one-fourth of that amount as their sales slow globally.
According to Reuters report, a March launch is planned for the new platform. But I guess, this launch will get delayed due to the Coronavirus outbreak.
Source: The Verge
