Huawei claims AppGallery is now the third-largest app store in the world

By Muhammad Jarir Kanji
published

Huawei App Gallery
Huawei App Gallery (Image credit: Huawei)

What you need to know

  • Huawei claims its app store is now the third-largest in the world.
  • The company is hoping to court developers by claiming up to 400 million monthly active users for AppGallery.
  • It's also planning to invest as much as $1 billion to attract developers to its app marketplace.

As the Trump administration tightens its noose around Huawei, and Google signals its helplessness in the matter, Huawei is charging ahead with its hopes of becoming independent of the Android maker's influence — and more importantly, the Play Store.

The company is planning to spend up to $1 billion on courting developers to its app marketplace and has also teamed up with Xiaomi, Vivo, and OPPO in its goal of breaking the shackles of the Play Store.

In a new press release, the company is reminding the world that it can survive without Google and plans to further accelerate the development of Huawei Mobile Services (HMS), with AppGallery at the center of those efforts. In a further bid to lure developers onto its platform, the company also made the bold claim of having the third-largest app store in the world, second only to the Play Store and Apple App Store.

The company claims that as of 2019, AppGallery had more than 400,000 monthly users, putting in a comfortable third place behind the Play Store and Apple's marketplace. However, it must be noted that this is a distant third because while that 400K number is impressive, the Play Store had 1 billion monthly active users...all the way back in 2015. A majority of those 400K monthly users are also most likely based in Huawei's home country of China, where phones don't ship with the Play Store in general, making these numbers slightly skewed, to say the least.

As Huawei continues to build up its own ecosystem to take on Google's, the company is, in the meantime, planning to mitigate its dire situation outside of China by pre-installing some of the most popular apps on its phone before they leave the factory. The company will reportedly test this stopgap strategy with the release of the P40 next month, followed by a number of other midrange devices from the Chinese giant.

12 Comments
  • Take that, BlackBerry World!
  • Blackberry messenger was abbreviated to BBM, did they call their app store BBW? Cause ya know, if I'd known I'd get full BBW access, I'd have bought a blackberry lol.
  • Wow!!! It's the third largest?!?! From what, the other non-existent top ten?! In other news Huawei has also announced that they have perfected the Palm Pilot and the Zune...
  • To be fair I can think of three other app stores off the top of my head (besides apple's and Google's).
  • Then you are a better person than I am...😉 I couldn't think beyond BlackBerry World... Does the Amazon App Store still count?!
  • If it doesn't, then I've only got two lol. F-droid and the galaxy store. There's also tencent or whatever, but I think that's an app with a ridiculous amount of features rather than a store.
  • Have to give it to them they are giving it a right go. Will be interesting to see if they can pull this off. Ide live to see others split to. I get android is standard now but more choice is better imp.
  • Wasnt Huawei supposed to announce the new Kirin 820 during the event? No news about it till now. So theres no Kirin 820 ?
  • Is it 400K or 400 million? The article says both..
  • Huawei sold over 200 million phones in last year alone. So it's probably 400 million.
  • A quick look on App Store shows no Grindr and no Scruff! I think it's yeh, nah for me. Hello One Plus!?
  • It's 400 million active monthly users, not 400k. According to third party estimates, 200 million out of the 400 million are inside China, the other dispersed throughout the world. The next 10 largest app stores are also Chinese, the difference is, unlike Huawei's store, they're almost entirely used inside China, 2 of them are only available in Chinese language. Alternative western app stores, like appitude, aren't large enough to make the list.