App news roundup 17 January

The Chinese technology firm, Huawei, which has been embroiled in allegations of spying and unsecure networks for months, has announced a £20 million investment fund to expand its own app store. 

The firm is currently subject to a US trade ban which means it is not permitted to use Google Android software. It was handed a ban from working with US companies last year after the US government said it presented a spying threat.

In order to help it retain and grow its client base, the tech company has said that it will invest millions of pounds to develop what will become the world’s third largest app store in the world. Its investment is being used to encourage UK developers to upload their apps to the Huawei app store. A £20,000 prize is also being offered to sweeten the deal and will be awarded to an app uploaded to the store this month. 

The Huawei App Gallery has an estimated 600 million active users currently including four million UK users. The firm faces an uphill battle to grow its app offering due to developers favouring the Google App Store over Huawei. 

New data has revealed that TikTok – one of the most downloaded apps of last year – enjoyed its best ever performance in 2019 with 44% of its downloads coming in the last 12 months. Figures show that the video app has been downloaded 1.65 billion times, with a massive 738 million of those downloads coming in 2019 alone. The number of downloads it recorded was 13% more than 2018. The end of the year was especially fruitful with the all-important holiday season the app’s best ever in terms of new user activations.

Last year was also notable for revenue, with TikTok making $176.9 million – this amount represents a huge 71% of its all time revenue creation, demonstrating that the Chinese app is getting much better at monetising its humungous user base and viral popularity.