Huawei to launch music streaming service in SA

Part of the service bundle includes Huawei Music, which the company said would be released later in the year with 80% local content. Huawei’s announcement comes after Swedish music platform Spotify launched its services in South Africa last week.

Huawei said the company was also planning to launch an app store tailored for the African market. The app store would feature locally developed games, music, movies, books and other content, the company said.

“We want to localise Huawei’s mobile cloud services as much as possible and offer services that plug seamlessly into the everyday lives of consumers,” Huawei vice-president of consumer cloud service Su Jie said.

“One of our key objectives is to create an open ecosystem for local developers and give them an opportunity to contribute to our services."

Huawei’s cloud service boasts more than 32 million active users in China. Its app store alone has amassed more than 200 billion downloads, most of them coming from the East Asian country.

“It’s one of the biggest services in China. We have 160 million monthly users on average, which has increased 60% from 2016,” the senior manager of business development for consumer cloud services at Huawei South Arica, Mosa Hlobelo, said.

Other cloud-based services include a cashless payment system that will work with South African banks and an advertising platform called Screen Magazine.

“This gives local brands an opportunity to reach given the number of active users we have,” Hlobelo said, adding that Huawei has 20 services worldwide, which will be launched gradually in South Africa to ensure they are market-appropriate.

The Shenzhen-based company is following an integration strategy similar to Apple’s, where users can have a full experience on their devices without using third-party software.

Huawei said its mobile cloud services would roll out to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa following the South Africa launch.

Huawei mobile cloud-based services to be released in South Africa:

• Huawei Music – which will include 80% local music.
• App Gallery – which grants users access to Huawei’s app store.
• Theme Store – where users can customise their smartphones.
• HiCloud – used to back up and restore data.
• Screen Magazine – an "unintrusive" advertising platform.
• Mobile Payment – a cashless payment system that could see Nedbank and FNB as partners.