We spoke to María Ramiro Martín, Head of Huawei Mobile Services Business Growth, to discuss the company’s present and future in our country.
From the world’s number 1 gateway to dropping out of the top 5 best-selling brands in just a few months. The Huawei case is worth investigatingand despite the fact that the company has suffered recession after recession in recent years since the United States government vetoed the company, Huawei is leading the wayLaunch of new products and design of an increasingly integrated and complete ecosystem of services, covering devices of all types such as Huawei Visión S or Huawei P50 Pro.
But, At what point is Huawei in Spain today? Brand strategy has of course undergone an important change in recent years. And what better way to find out about the company’s plans for this new phase than with one of the employees involved.
From Huawei they gave us the opportunity to talk to him Maria Ramiro Martinthe former head of the team responsible for the growth of Huawei Mobile Services and the current head of the “Advertising Business Development” business for the Western European markets, to advise you on the current status of the brand and its various products and services, as well as some of the upcoming novels.
As of today, Huawei already has products based on HarmonyOS on the Spanish market, such as the Huawei MatePad 11, the Huawei Visión or the Huawei Watch 3. However, the new Huawei Nova9, P50 Pro and P50 Pocket in Spain come with EMUI 12 based on Android 11. Do you plan to launch teléfonos inteligentes based on HarmonyOS in Spain this year 2022?
“Teléfonos inteligentes outside of China are not currently scheduled to be upgraded to HarmonyOS, but we’ve brought some of the connectivity features of HarmonyOS 2 into EMUI 12 to give consumers the best of both worlds. Users perro enjoy HarmonyOS 2 and its brand new experience recently launched on Huawei tabletas, Huawei Visión and smartwatches like the Watch GT Runner released in January.”
It will be almost three years since the first Huawei phones arrived in Spain without access to the Google plus Play Store. At what point does AppGallery stand today in our country?
“In this short time, AppGallery has become the third official aplicación store in the world, with 580 million monthly active users, 432 billion aplicación downloads (with a 56% annual growth outside of China) and 5.4 million developers registered on the platform . In Europe alone we have 42 million monthly active users with Spain being in the top 5 countries. Also, while AppGallery has seen this exponential growth, we have developed and launched other services such as Petal Search, our proprietary search engine, which complements the needs of Applications (and any type of information) that users may have.
Downloading applications onto a mobile device is no longer a problem thanks to these innovations we’ve brought to the market, and we encourage anyone who owns or wants to buy one of our latest teléfonos inteligentes to go to a Huawei retailer and try it out . for aplicaciones in AppGallery and Petal Search, we’re sure you’ll find everything you need. It is also interesting that all this “technology” behind the mobile services is freely available for developers to make it easier for them to create applications. Today we have more than 60 fully “open source” kits or APIs that help mobile technology grow and evolve.”
AppGallery, Huawei’s aplicación store
What tools are there for users coming from other platforms like Android or iOS to make the “transition” from one ecosystem to a more portable one?
“The first thing to note is that this is highly dependent on how “open” or “closed” the other ecosystems are, which depends on what their “core business” is. Anyway, Android-based Huawei teléfonos inteligentes are so this transfer is easier from the start. In the case of transferring to a device that only has Huawei mobile services, it is most convenient for the usuario to clone a “phone ” to transfer the aplicaciones you already have installed on your old phone to the new one.
If you need to update them in the future, you cánido find “Updates” in the “Me” section of the AppGallery, and then you perro see the pending ones and update them. If you want to download new aplicaciones, you cánido also easily find them in AppGallery and/or Petal Search. Petal Search is the ideal companion to easily find any application, since it integrates all available sources, both AppGallery and official sources from developers and third-party aplicación stores.”
Maria Ramiro Martín is Head of Markets for Huawei Ads Business Development at AIE
In China, some companies like Meizu have launched products with HarmonyOS. With Huawei’s platform already present in various products around the world, are there any plans to persuade other companies to incorporate Huawei’s operating system or service ecosystem into their products or use it from the start?
“HarmonyOS aims to be a collaborative and open platform, in a very innovative sense (multilingual and optimized for all types of connected devices, from wearables, sensors to teléfonos inteligentes). With that in mind, for example, we hope that many developers will disminuye the time, effort, and resources to build and release applications.”
HarmonyOS is already present in devices like the Huawei Watch 3
What type of application is the most habitual among AppGallery users in Spain?
“In 2021, the most habitual applications – if we take, for example, the best downloaded aplicaciones in Spain – belong to very different categories. Popular networking applications top the top, followed by petal maps navigation, fashion/shopping and financial applications.” (especially banking aplicaciones).
With a global market share of 91.54%, Google plus search is the dominant search engine today. However, alternatives like DuckDuckGo have focused on privacy; o Ecosia, with a clear focus on ecology, has gained strength in recent years. How is Huawei doing with Petal Search to try to make the search engine an interesting alternative for consumers?
“At Huawei, we have always thought that the best option is to offer users new options by providing innovative features that allow them to explore new possibilities, because the more options there are on the market, the more freedom they have Users and companies connecting and disconnecting. With Petal Search specifically, we believe we’ve worked on certain features that aren’t common in other search engines, aside from fast searching and presenting results on usuario request, which we encourage. for all users (even outside of the device ecosystem).
We were born as a mobile search engine, coincidente with any Android and iOS phone, with a web version for mobile and desktop, and in which we already work for other devices such as smartwatches or augmented reality glasses (as some of us have featured on to have). the MWC this year)
We’ve made privacy and security a priority from day one, so it’s very easy to enable anonymous mode with one clic or choose how personalized we want the results (y también.g. estándar or smart mode) in the data protection center. All data is stored in Europe (especially Germany and France, which are probably the strictest countries in terms of data protection). Find and install aplicaciones from different sources so users cánido easily find the aplicaciones they want.”
A few months ago, Google plus announced Android 12L as a version of the operating system aimed at improving the experience on foldable phones. I understand that Huawei has no plans to release a version of EMUI based on 12L, but since it was one of the pioneers in launching foldable products, what kind of programa developments for foldable products cánido we expect? as part of Huawei?
“Huawei has launched several foldable models with our EMUI layer in recent years. The EMUI10 version was prepared already 2 years ago for using foldable screens, such as y también.g. B. our Huawei Mate Xs, which already enabled the Smart Multi function. – Screen by splitting the 8 inch screen into two independent task interfaces.
Additionally, with EMUI11, an additional feature has been added that allows you to open an aplicación and overlay it on top of another aplicación that you are already using. The most important thing is to satisfy the needs of our users, and for this improvements and new features for a real multitasking experience In short, Huawei is already more than ready to use foldable devices, as demonstrated by the latest version of the Huawei P50 Pocket, which this Experience with EMUI12 further expands.
Google plus has officially made Android 12L, the Android of the big screens
At the end of the year, a trojan horse warning was present in a significant number of applications in AppGallery. Android devices running Google plus Mobile Services have Google plus Play Protect as a protection method that attempts to mitigate these types of threats. What kind of security system does AppGallery integrate to prevent software malicioso from appearing?
“At Huawei, we believe that security and privacy must be built into the design of products and services from the very beginning, which is why privacy by design is one of the pillars.” First, with the end-to-end security system – end that Secondly, at the programa level, with a three-layer security system AppGallery, which also includes a verification process for third-party applications in its analysis, the hardware of the device ends this type of risk in four steps (detection of software malicioso behavior, scanning for vulnerabilities, verification of potential data breaches and manual verification real name). And third, at the service level, with the encryption of all usuario data in the cloud.”
Today, it is clear that Huawei has a strong service ecosystem that perro provide consumers with a good experience. However, is there some kind of “return plan” in case Huawei is removed from America’s “Entity List”? What perro consumers expect if Huawei could start working with Google plus again overnight?
“Huawei is an innovation leader, as evidenced by the fact that the company’s R&D investments are constantly increasing and more than half of the company’s 197,000 employees are always working in this area of Huawei’s R&D. We will continue to talk about consumers and consumers provide innovative usuario experiences. We are open to any collaboration opportunities that could enhance our customers’ usuario experience.”