Information and communications technology giant Huawei has expanded its mobile service platform to bring on board more mobile applications (apps) from major South African brands.

Some of these applications within the Huawei AppGallery are “Quick Apps”, an app ecosystem that houses a new type of installation-free app that updates automatically.

This forms part of Huawei’s continued development of Huawei Mobile Services (HMS).

“As we develop our market offering, we have to be mindful of the specific challenges that exist in every territory in which we operate,” said Huawei Consumer Business Group for Middle East and Africa VP Likun Zhao.

South Africans pay an average of R106 for 1 GB of data, which is six times more expensive than what mobile users pay in other emerging economies.

“Huawei understands the limitations that expensive data presents for smartphone users,” he added.

Quick Apps negates the traditional requirement of downloading and installing an entire app, with users able to ‘stream’ apps to try out certain limited functionality without involving any of the cost or effort associated with installation.

“These apps provide an engaging user experience, offer powerful functionality and enable automatic updates of HTML5 pages, much like any other Android apps. But the beauty of these apps resides in their limited use of memory space,” Zhao commented, noting that they do not need to be downloaded to run, thereby limiting data use costs.

Quick Apps take up less memory space as they are written with only one-fifth the amount of code compared with that of Android apps, meaning that users can accommodate more than 2 000 Quick Apps instead of just 20 native apps with just 1 GB of space.

Quick Apps can also be added to the home screen and used directly with a single touch, which helps to attract and retain more users.

To date, there have been more than 1 700 Quick Apps released globally, representing a 200% year-on-year growth since inception, with the apps used on more than 350-million Huawei phones.

They are also compatible with a new set of standards that are supported on over one-billion smartphones.

“This sheer scale of support and reduced development cost make Quick Apps lucrative for developers looking to reach new users,” he concluded.