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SINGAPORE – Chinese phone maker Huawei launched yesterday (February 23) a US $ 40 million (S $ 52.8 million) regional hub here that allows developers to test apps and services for their mobile devices, a first in Asia. -Peaceful.
The center, dubbed DigiX Lab, will provide online and offline consultations for developers, and practical support in application development using augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, software to port applications to Huawei devices and other technologies.
The launch comes amid a US ban on Huawei from May 2019 that limits its ability to use the services and applications of US tech giant Google, such as the Google Play app store, for its products. This led the Chinese firm to further develop its own version called Huawei Mobile Services (HMS).
And despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Huawei also tripled its HMS team here in the last year, including operations, marketing and technical staff to support Singapore application developers.
He declined to give a figure on the size of the team, but said it has more than 650 employees here, more than 70 percent of whom are local.
The company said the lab at Changi Business Park “leverages Singapore’s importance as a growing technology hub in Asia-Pacific” to drive the mobile ecosystem across the region.
Mr. Nicholas Ma, CEO of Huawei International, added that the lab is an example of how the company “duplicates future growth in Singapore.”
Mr. Shan Xuefeng, Asia Pacific Director of Huawei Consumer Cloud Service, said that “in the era of 5G, Huawei aims to build (a connected world) with HMS that enables developers to innovate while building their business.”
HMS has been around for years and has its own app store called AppGallery that launched in China in 2011 and globally in 2018.
The Singapore DigiX Lab is Huawei’s second in the world. The first was launched in Germany and another six are in the works, the company said.
The Singapore lab serves markets with the most registered Huawei developers in Asia-Pacific, such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.
Huawei will spend $ 40 million on the lab over two to three years, starting in 2020.
The amount is to hire technical experts, including some for the HMS team, the construction and maintenance of the physical DigiX Lab, an online server and developer resources, devices and regular events that take place online and offline in the center, such as training workshops and networks.
It has an area of 289 square meters, or just over three four-room floors of the Housing Board, and has space for 70 people.
The Huawei experts that integrate it will provide technical support and services to developers facing problems developing applications for HMS.
Training events, workshops and networking will also be held in the lab to grow the local developer community.
There have been concerns that the exclusion of Google apps and services would mean far fewer apps for Huawei phones. But the company said it has increased the number of applications for HMS, with more than 120,000 applications at the end of last year, up from 50,000 in early 2020.
The firm said that in Singapore, there was also a 143 percent growth in the number of newly registered Huawei developers, with more than 90 percent of Singapore’s top applications now supported by HMS.
These include WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, Line, and Dropbox.
Local applications include those from TraceTogether, ComfortDelGro, DBS, UOB, The Straits Times, and Lianhe Zaobao. The latest addition at the end of last month was the Grab app. The government’s SingPass app will soon be available in the first half of this year.
While they work with Huawei devices, some like WhatsApp can only be downloaded from other sites and not directly from AppGallery yet.
The number of HMS users has also grown. In March of last year, there were more than 400 million monthly active users. Now, the number has grown to 580 million users.
Other ways Huawei is supporting developers beyond DigiX Labs include creating technical teams in key Asia-Pacific markets since last year to help app developers concerned about the costs of porting an app to HMS and jitters about its potential market reach.
In addition to technical assistance, Huawei’s HMS team has also supported application partners by tailoring joint marketing campaigns based on the application’s unique selling points and local preferences.
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