Huawei launched their Huawei HMS App Innovation Contest, Apps UP, for developers around APAC last week and the company has now opened up the contest to developers globally.
The Apps UP contest is now open to developers in Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, Latin America and China.
From now until 30 August 2020, developers in all 5 regions can enter the AppsUP Contest to compete for a prize pool worth $1million simply by integrating their apps with at least one HMS Core Kit.
“With AppGallery’s continued growth and position as one of the top three global app marketplace, winners of the Apps UP contest will get the chance to have their apps promoted on Huawei AppGallery, making them accessible to hundreds of millions of device users from more than 170 countries and regions, combined with the benefits of AppGallery Connect, providing a one-stop service open platform for mobile apps,” Huawei said in a statement.
Prizes and wider benefits
- USD$1 million in total funded by the Shining-Star Program, in cash prizes in the following categories: Best App, Best Game, Best Social Impact App, Most Popular App, Honourable Mention
- Opportunity to compete on a global stage and showcase technical ability using leading HMS Core
- Discussion with industry experts and Apps UP’s expert judging panel
- Global media promotion opportunities
- Free access to Huawei Developer events, courses and certifications
All apps must be developed integrating HMS Core and submitted on the contest official website before 18:00 UTC+8 on August 30, where a panel of regional industry experts will score each entry on social value, business value, user experience and originality.
From there, at the stage of public review, the top 20 shortlisted apps in each region will be made available for the public to download on the contests official website or Huawei AppGallery from September 21, making their way to the finals in October.
Schedule
- Registration & submission: June 30 – August 30 (UTC+8)
- Preliminary: August 31 – September 20 (UTC+8). The judging panel will review the submitted works and select 20 works from each region for the public review and final stages, by September 20, 2020.
- Public review: September 21 – October 4 (UTC+8). Shortlisted works will be exhibited for global promotion, on both the contest official website as well as HUAWEI AppGallery. A work’s public rating score is based on its popularity (the number of downloads and votes received).
- Finals for each region: October (UTC+8). Each region will hold a separate final in October. The judging panel will rank the 20 shortlisted works according to a comprehensive scoring formula, in which the judging panel and public rating scores are added.
Developers can register for AppsUP here and sign up either as an individual or as a team of up to three members.
HMS Core 5.0
Huawei launched Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) Core 5.0 for global developers last month, introducing services in seven main areas including App Services, Graphics, Media, AI, Smart Device, Security, and System for developers to make the most of Huawei’s “chip-device-cloud” capabilities
HMS (HUAWEI Mobile Services) is Huawei’s own service framework used to replace Google GMS services. HMS Core is a collection of Huawei cloud services and mobile service open capabilities. It is a platform that provides basic services for application development.
It aggregates Huawei terminal core-end-cloud capabilities, including a full set of open HMS Apps, HMS Core, HMS Capabilities, HMS Connect, and corresponding development and testing IDE tools.
If you’re a developer, HMS Core helps you enhance your app’s user experience by providing features such as push notifications, quick logins, in-app payments, machine learning, as well as map and game services.
As of March 2020, Huawei’s global monthly active users has reached 650 million, a year-on-year increase of 25 percent. Additionally, there are 1.4 million registered developers worldwide, a 115 percent growth over the last year. The number of apps integrated with HMS Core has also exceeded 60,000 globally, demonstrating 67 percent year-on-year growth.
HMS Core 5.0 is a successor to HMS Core 4.0 with more than 20 newly added capabilities to meet the growing needs of developers worldwide. The 4.0 version has already established diverse open capabilities ranging from AI to security, while the newly launch HMS Core 5.0 takes one step further to offer expanded capabilities such as Computer Graphics (CG) Kit, AR Engine, Accelerate Kit, Scene Kit, and more to provide a comprehensive solution for app development.
Following are the key highlights of HMS Core 5.0 services:
- Computer Graphics Kit helps accelerate the adoption of CG in apps, which will especially benefit the motion picture and gaming industries in creating richer and innovative content. With the improved Physically Based Rendering (PBR) algorithm, developers are enabled to accurately represent real-world materials in the mobile game.
- AR Engine offers a wide range of AR-related capabilities such as motion, environment, human body and face tracking, for developers to create an interactive and immersive AR experiences easily.
- Accelerate Kit provides developers with multi-core, multi-threading solutions to optimise the app performance. For apps that require heavy geometry or CG rendering such as mobile game, the Accelerate Kit eases the app development process and makes it run efficiently.
There are several upgrades that have also been made to the existing App Services. Scan Kit now incorporates deep learning-based scanning codes to improve scanning accuracy in challenging situations with faster response.
The Map Kit adds bus and subway route planning to help developers improve the app functionalities.
‘Cloud Debugging’ for app test run and debugging on Huawei devices remotely
As a lightweight Integrated Development Environment (IDE) tool plugin, HMS Core Toolkit implements app creation, encoding, conversion, debugging, testing services to help developers integrate HMS Core with lower costs and higher efficiency.
For example, the ‘Cloud Debugging’ service offers emulators to enable developers to test run and debug their apps on different Huawei devices remotely online.
This service covers wide range of Huawei’s latest device models, including the popular HUAWEI P series and Mate series. The ‘Cloud Debugging’ supports resolution change, and switch between landscape and portrait modes. Developers can also view and download logs for fault identification.
‘Cloud Debugging’ is accessible through Huawei Developer website; and the service is currently only available in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region.
