Though it sometimes is taken for granted among the nonstop news cycle for other segments of the gaming market, mobile gaming is already the fastest growing portion of the industry, with Newzoo’s research estimating that mobile accounted for 48% of all gaming revenues in 2020. With that in mind, it only made sense that a big portion of the recent Huawei Developer Conference 2021 was devoted to how the company is devoting extensive resources to ensuring developers can build the best mobile gaming experiences and expose them to the widest possible audience.
Among the highlights of this year’s event, which carried the “Together” theme and took place from Friday, Oct. 21 through Sunday, Oct. 24, was the opening keynote, “On Track to Map the Future,” which provided attendees with updates on HarmonyOS and HMS Core 6.0, as well as advice from experts on how to best take advantage of their new capabilities. Another key portion of the conference was the Gaming Tech Session, “Find Your Next Big Win,” led by Alexandre Salem, Huawei’s Global Director of Gaming Partnerships.
Salem went into even more detail on how fast the mobile gaming market is growing, not just in revenues but in the sheer number of people playing. In 2020, more than 2.8 billion people played mobile games, a stunning number that represents 36% of the entire world’s population and was up 6.4% over the previous year.
But that audience is also demanding and easily lured to new games, putting the onus on developers to continually serve them with convenient, fun, and innovative gameplay options. To that end, Salem explained how Huawei works with partners, including companies like Playrix and Gameloft, and supports them with its suite of mobile gaming tools and resources.
Among the most important of those resources is AppGallery, Huawei’s mobile app distribution platform which launched worldwide in 2018. The Gaming Tech Session shined the spotlight on how AppGallery provides developers with the technological capabilities, full-spectrum support, and commercial opportunities to succeed in an increasingly competitive and often opaque market. Salem laid out the four pillars that make up AppGallery’s value proposition — scale, speed, discoverability, and monetisation — as well as its capacity to provide high-touch support when needed.
Salem also shared specific examples of how some of Huawei’s partners have found increased success thanks to AppGallery:
- Gameloft has launched more than 11 games on AppGallery, including popular, well-known titles like Asphalt 9 Legends, March of Empires, War Planet Online, and Dragon Mania Legends. The company reported that these and other games saw a combined 70% increase in downloads in just their first three months on the platform.
- Playrix, developer of hits such as Gardenscapes and Homescapes, partnered with AppGallery for its series of game launches and received full end-to-end support, including implementation of HMS Core Kits and promotions through Huawei Ads. The result was a series of successful global launches with impressive download performance.
Combined with other services like Petal Search, Petal Maps, and HUAWEI Ads, Salem noted that AppGallery helps developers increase discoverability and maximize their monetization efforts. And they’re not only for big companies, as Huawei has worked with more than 5.1 million developers across 170 countries and regions around the world.
If you missed the Gaming Tech Session at Huawei Developer Conference 2021, the good news is that you can watch it any time on demand. The full conference is archived on YouTube, and the specific session can be viewed on Huawei’s HDC home page.
You can also check out the latest and hottest mobile games on AppGallery by visiting its landing page at appgallery.huawei.com.
