Chinese Tech Giants Team Up Against Google Play Store Domination

Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo teamed up to create a unified solution that would allow developers to easily upload their apps to all their stand-alone app stores at the same time.

In other words, a developer building an Android app can use this new solution to upload it to stores belonging to all these tech giants simultaneously, without having to manually submit the app to each store individually.

While at first glance this is a move supposed to help the Chinese companies make it easier for developers to upload their apps, it’s also a step that helps them grow their stores and reduce reliance on the Google Play Store.

Huawei was banned in mid-May 2019 by the United States government from using products developed by American companies, including Google’s Android. Due to the sanctions, Huawei can no longer offer its devices pre-loaded with Google services on international markets, so the company is working not only on its own operating system, but also on growing the app store that comes bundled with its phones.

Launch originally set for March

With this new alliance, the Chinese phone makers help each other to bring more apps to their stores, essentially providing user with a more worthy alternative in those markets where the Google Play store isn’t available. The terms and conditions page provides a closer look at the purpose of this joint effort:

“The GDSA platform provides unified access to multiple mobile phone manufacturers’ stores. Developers can submit applications (including Android free-to-install applications, games, music, movies, books, magazines, or other digital content or services through the registration platform), which can be synchronized to multiple mobile phone manufacturers’ app stores that have already cooperated.”

A report from Reuters indicates that the platform was supposed to launch in March, but due to delays caused by the coronavirus, there’s a chance the release was pushed back to a later date.

Called the Global Developer Service Alliance (GDSA), the alliance is supposed to help these companies in their efforts outside China, where the Google Play Store dominates all markets where Android phones are available.