Huawei’s Hongmeng OS is believed to feature Aptoide as a Google Play Store alternative. This news comes in after a recent rumour that Huawei’s own OS will also be able to run Android apps and games natively. Huawei already has an “app store” by the name of App Gallery on every Huawei and Honor device. It turns out, this store has been the company’s very early efforts to pull in new app developers to publish their apps and games on to Huawei’s own app marketplace. If this all goes through, Huawei App Gallery will be one of the biggest Play Store alternatives available.
All eyes are on Huawei right now as more news and speculations are coming in about their in-house developed operating system. It is also rumoured that this app store for Hongmeng OS will be powered by Aptoide. For those who are not aware, Aptoide is the largest independent marketplace to distribute Android apps and games. It can be installed on any device that supports Android applications. From phones, to TVs to even wearables! A number of OEMs use Aptoide in a co-branded partnership to include their own branded app store on their devices.
Huawei is well aware of how dependent they are to Google, their apps and their platform. However, they have been working on alternatives for when their relationship with Google fails i.e. the current situation with the US government.
Huawei’s efforts to pull in more app developers to App Gallery have been going on since 2018. According to Bloomberg, Huawei also offered “a simple tool to tweak the software they wrote for Google’s store to work on App Gallery.”
The US government has granted Huawei a grace period of 90 days before the full ban goes in effect. That means, after the 90-day period is over, Huawei will not have access to future Android updates, the Google Play Store platform and all other related Google services. This also means, a number of US companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. will not be able to do business and work with Hauwei in any way. That means, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram on any of Huawei or Honor devices.
Hongmeng OS is expected to be released around fall of this year. Huawei has yet to comment more on their “Plan B”, but the release of Android Q on recent Huawei and Honor phones look very unlikely.
We’ll update more on how is this all going to effect the current Huawei / Honor users.
