Should we be "present" on the Appgallery, the Huawei application shop?Since he has no more access to the Google Play Store due to American sanctions, the Chinese champion folds in four to encourage the most popular applications in Europe to come on his "house" store.

It is a question of life or death for Huawei.Its market share has melted as snow in the sun on the old continent since its phones no longer embarrage the famous "Killer apps" like Gmail, YouTube or Google Maps.

Officially, Appgallery is a success.Huawei presents it as the "third largest application store in the world".580 million people use it every month in 170 countries, especially in China.

"2.3 million developers, including 300,000 outside China, have designed applications for our shop," said Alex Huang, the director of marketing for Europe.Huawei also says he seduced 100 % of Chinese applications and three quarters of European applications.

Plot

But at this stage, Western developers are still circumspect.Admittedly, Deezer, Booking, Telegram, Snapchat and Leboncoin are present.But the offer remains very fragmented for a customer accustomed to the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.

The biggest social networks (Facebook, Twitter ...) are missing - you have to look manually in the search bar to land on their web page.The SNCF is present, but not the RATP.Société Générale, Crédit Mutuel and La Banque Postale are also there, but with a number of downloads largely below the million.Ditto for the media.

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The problem is economical.For an Apps editor, arriving on the Appgallery means developing a third application, in addition to those on Android and iOS.The project remains expensive, despite the technical aid provided by Huawei, a direct debit on "in-app" expenses of 15 % (much less than at Google and Apple) ... and technologies that will avoid having to "recode".

“The addition of a third application store is not an insignificant task.It is likely that publishers continue to give priority to iOS and Google Play and only add the management of the Appgallery when Huawei devices represent a significant part of a key market for their activity, ”explains-We at Appannie.

An uncertain audience

“I have no doubt that creating the app is easy.The problem is maintenance, comments the head of application developments for a large French company.Managing three blinds is multiplying by three the work of 'front' developers to make the updates.And for which audience?We have a lot of trouble getting figures.And when we look at the data going up from mobile sites, Huawei equipment users are very minority.»»

Blablacar, for its part, first wants to test the craze of users before working on a more successful application.Another large publisher adds that, since Huawei's in-app payment system is no longer that of Google's Play Store, the accounting teams must also be mobilized.

An image question

“The question that developers are asking is really: what will be the return on investment?»Explains Baptiste Michel, CEO and co -founder of BAM, a specialized agency that designed applications for Renault, Meetic, BNP Paribas and UGC.“For the moment, a minority of our customers have changed, because it is very new.»»

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Last difficulty for Huawei, the question of the image.While the Chinese giant is taken in the rets of the American administration and must defend themselves accusations of espionage, to be a precursor on the Appgallery can be seen as an implicit act of political support.What general departments do not want ... at any price.