Chinese smartphones makers Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO and Vivo are challenging the dominance of Google's Play store by jointly creating a platform for developers outside China to upload apps onto all of their app stores simultaneously, Reuters reported on Thursday.
The report cited people with knowledge of the matter as saying that the four companies are launching an initiative dubbed the Global Developer Service Alliance (GDSA) with the aim of making it easier for developers of games, music, movies and other apps to market their apps in overseas markets.
An early website has already gone live showing developers how to sign up for an account and confirming that it covers nine markets including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Russia.
In the website's "About" section, it reads:
The Global Developer Service Alliance (GDSA) is committed to providing one-stop services including content distribution, development support, marketing operation, brand promotion and traffic monetization to global developers.
These services help developers improve their brand awareness, and obtain a large number of high-quality users and traffic monetization. Our services have covered nine countries and regions such as India, Indonesia, Russia and Malaysia. GDSA is looking forward to working with extraordinary developers to move forward together and achieve win-win cooperation.
The terms and conditions of the website also provided more details on how the initiative will actually work:
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.
The website said that developers can choose to use the advertising monetization SDK provided by the alliance, getting better or more promotion spots as a result.
The Reuters report said The GDSA was initially aiming to launch in March, although it is not clear how that will be affected by the recent coronavirus outbreak.
"By forming this alliance each company will be looking to leverage the others' advantages in different regions, with Xiaomi's strong user base in India, Vivo and Oppo in Southeast Asia, and Huawei in Europe," Nicole Peng, the VP of Mobility at Canalys, told Reuters.
"Secondly, it's to start to build some more negotiation power against Google," she added.
Together the four companies made up 40.1% of global handset shipments in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to the consultancy IDC.
