Huawei began HMS (HUAWEI Mobile Services) App Innovation Contest – 2021 Apps Up – in Beijing with a grand opening ceremony. Besides starting registration and submission of applications, the event also witnessed the participation of top developers from around the world.
During the event, developers tried to integrate the open capabilities of HMS Core, delivered new app experiences, and build a fully connected, intelligent world.
Other guests present at the event included senior technical experts, executives of investment institutions, CEOs and founders of Internet companies, veteran technical media staff, and representatives from social service organizations. These specialists formed a review panel that provided valuable recommendations and support for the participating developers.
After registration and submission of application starting from June 10th to September 10th, 2021 Apps Up will have a three-stage programme schedule. It includes a Preliminary event on August 21 and Public Review between September 10th to 23rd. In October, Huawei will organise finals and award ceremonies.
Huawei Senior Vice President and Member of the Board Catherine Chen remotely joined the event and witnessed the opening alongside the distinguished guests on site.
She delivered an opening speech titled ‘Shining stars will never go out as long as we move forward shoulder to shoulder’, in which she highlighted the significance of the event.
Catherine Chen also shared a typical case study to encourage more developers to pursue their dreams, and spoke about the HUAWEI Women Developers programme. With this program in place, an increasing number of women in tech have the opportunity to head onto the stage and demonstrate their capabilities.
“The HMS ecosystem goes beyond Huawei’s own products and services, and we are opening more than just API interfaces. We hope to become a center of excellence that connects consumers, developers, and third-party service providers, bringing a more diverse range of premium experiences to consumers. Today, our AppGallery is available in more than 170 countries and regions. Through this extensive network, we want every innovative app and service to be able to reach out and benefit device users in every corner of the world,” stressed Catherine Chen.
With support from developers and partners worldwide, the HMS ecosystem is making great strides globally. Backed by Huawei’s openness and pursuit of shared success, this ecosystem has become the world’s third-largest mobile app ecosystem. By the end of December 2021, over 4 million developers had registered on HMS and over 134,000 apps were connected to HMS Core.
OCR Scan
In her speech, Catherine Chen shared a story about developer who developed an app named OCR Scan and became all the rage on Huawei’s AppGallery. The developer originally only created this app for his girlfriend, who is obsessed with reading. Through repeated fine-tuning, and coupled with the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities provided by Huawei’s platform, this app has constantly improved and is now extremely popular. To date, it has been downloaded 14 million times.
The app was also warmly welcomed by visually impaired groups. As this app can identify words from an image, a simple photo of a page is enough for users to hear the words out loud. This app was chosen for an Honorable Mention during last year’s Huawei HMS App Innovation Contest for its innovation capabilities and user recognition. This story is a good example of how developers benefit from the HMS ecosystem.
As a suite of open software and hardware capabilities from HMS, HMS Core is the foundation of the HMS ecosystem. HMS Core provides a whole set of basic services for app development, through which developers can rapidly, efficiently, and easily build apps at lower costs.
As the HMS ecosystem perfects itself, stories like that of the OCR Scan will become commonplace. Huawei will continue opening its core technical capabilities, which have built up over many years, to more developers. Hopefully, this will help them innovate and create even more value for users and society at large.
Empowering woman
At this year’s contest, Huawei put together a handsome incentive package, including 1 million US dollars in prize money, hoping to engage more excellent developers worldwide. We also added new award categories: Best HMS Core Innovation Award, All-Scenario Coverage Award, and Tech Women’s Award. The new Tech Women’s Award is intended to support and encourage more exceptional women in the tech world to stand out.
“We have created women empowerment programmes because we hope that an increasing number of women working in tech can be placed in the spotlight and demonstrate their capabilities. I also hope that their remarkable achievements will inspire more women to pursue their dreams,” said Catherine Chen.
Huawei is committed to empowering women through digital skill training programs. These programmes have the potential to address digital gender equality worldwide, because they can be rolled out in any country, regardless of its level of development, and for people of any age group. To date, Huawei launched digital skill training programmes for women across numerous countries, including Argentina, Bangladesh, Ireland, Kenya, and South Africa. Currently, over 30% of the trainees participating in Huawei’s other ICT training programs, such as Seeds for the Future, are women. Huawei also officially launched its HUAWEI Women Developers program (Apply) on March 8.
Business model
In addition to the company’s ability to drive change in the industry ecosystem and business models, Huawei’s HMS ecosystem offers a clear path to digital inclusion as new technologies continue to emerge. The HMS ecosystem offers a complete technical solution that includes open capabilities, integrated development environments, and tools.
This “one-point access, global reach” model simplifies the work of developers. Through this platform, developers can unleash their full potential and create more innovative apps and experiences for users in an intelligent world that is powered by 5G and AI. As developers use tech to change people’s lives for the better, they add value to society and accelerate the speed of technological breakthroughs, contributing to an all-scenario, intelligent ecosystem.
During the opening ceremony, Catherine Chen used the metaphor of “a tree” and “roots” to describe the close relationship between the success of the HMS ecosystem and developers. “A towering tree must be supported by its roots. A flourishing HMS ecosystem relies not only on advances in technology, but more on close collaboration between Huawei and developers. I believe that more and more people will be brought together through the HMS platform. Each shining star will help ignite the HMS ecosystem and bring more exciting and creative ideas into the world,” said Catherine Chen.
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