Chinese smartphone manufacturers to collaborate and build a platform to challenge Google’s Play Store

China’s smartphone giants including Huawei Technologies, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Oppo have recently announced that they plan on collaborating to build a solid platform that will enable foreign developers to upload their applications to the new store. The move, as per the analysts, is directed at competing against Google’s Play Store that currently has dominance over the market.

The collaboration named Global Developer Service Alliance (GDSA) is expected to help the foreign developers in marketing their applications and improving access to the potential users in overseas markets. Originally the GDSA was to be launched in March 2020. In light of the recent Coronavirus outbreak in China, however, delays can now be expected.

GDSA Will Initially Cover Nine Regions

As per the sources, the platform is likely to cover nine major regions in the beginning including Russia, Indonesia, and India. All four smartphone manufacturers have so far refrained from commenting on the news.

According to Sensor Tower analyst, Katie Williams, Google’s global earnings from its Play Store were marked at $8.8 billion in 2019 despite its ban in China. Google is also known to sell content like books, apps, and movies via its Play Store that earns the tech giant a 30% commission on each sale. Google has not commented on the news either.

IDC Consultancy’s data for 2019’s fourth quarter shows the four major Chinese smartphone manufacturers to account for 40.1% of the total handset shipments across the globe. In the international market, there is no ban on Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo to make use of Google services. Huawei, on the other hand, is completely banned from using Google services within China or abroad after Trump administration blacklisted it calling it a tool for espionage for China.

Huawei Is Confident Of Its To-Be Launched Harmony OS

IDC further highlighted that owing to the declining hardware sales, Chinese manufacturers are now committed to making their mark in the software and services niche. Huawei has reiterated its confidence in its currently under development Harmony OS on multiple occasions. The company says that it is excited about the launch of the Harmony OS as a staunch competitor of Google’s Android.

With GDSA, as per the experts, app developers will be able to relish better exposure as compared to Google’s Play Store that is already crowded to the extent of saturation. Monetary incentives for the developers at this new platform are also expected to be more lucrative as compared to Google.