Shenzhen-based Huawei is close to reaching a deal with Tencent to make its super app WeChat fully operational on HarmonyOS without sharing any revenue, according to a report by Bloomberg on Wednesday, citing anonymous sources.
While Douyin now has a HarmonyOS-compatible version available for download, the Bloomberg report said ByteDance expressed no interest in opening talks about revenue sharing when Huawei reached out to the TikTok owner.
Huawei and Tencent did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. ByteDance declined to comment on revenue-sharing talks with Huawei.
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Can Huawei’s Harmony OS for smartphones compete with Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS?
Can Huawei’s Harmony OS for smartphones compete with Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS?
WeChat – marketed as Weixin on the mainland – has 1.36 billion monthly active users nationwide, while top short video platform Douyin has more than 600 million daily active users.
“Bloomberg’s recent report on Huawei’s talks with Tencent to establish a lower-than-industry share of 20 per cent for in-game purchases provides hope for a reset” of the 30 per cent take-rate standard of app stores over the past decade, Morningstar senior equity analyst Ivan Su wrote in a research note on Wednesday.
“Although Huawei’s HarmonyOS currently represents a small percentage of smartphones in China, the potential lowering of its app store fee to 20 per cent could pressure other mobile app platforms to follow suit.”
While revenue-sharing talks are still undetermined, providing favourable terms to app developers could help HarmonyOS stay ahead of iOS on the mainland.
People walk past a shop of Huawei Technologies in Shanghai’s Huangpu district on June 5, 2024. Photo: Agence France-Presse
Huawei plans to release HarmonyOS Next with the Mate 70 series flagship smartphones later this year, rotating chairman Eric Xu Zhijun said in May.
The build-up of the HarmonyOS app ecosystem is “a crucial task for Huawei in 2024”, Xu said in April. He added that 5,000 apps are expected to support HarmonyOS this year, with plans to grow that number to 1 million over time.
Both Tencent and ByteDance are among the major Chinese firms that have been working to make their apps compatible with HarmonyOS. These include Tencent’s QQ Music and ByteDance’s Qimao Novels.
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