Huawei Technologies is planning on pushing forward its research and development of its wearables offerings that would focus on health care. The move arrives as part of its efforts to expand into new areas amid the US sanctions.

According to an SCMP report, the Chinese tech giant’s push towards this line could have it catch up with its rival Xiaomi, which is the world’s second largest wearables maker after the Cupertino based firm, Apple. At the moment, Huawei is working on three health research programmes on hypertension management, body temperature, and coronary heart disease. The company announced these initiatives earlier this month in an online event.

While it has announced that it is working on health care related wearables, it has yet to announce when we might see the integration of these new features in its offerings of smartwatches, smart bands, or even eyewear. However, the company did state that it is building a “strong barrier” to entry for other competitors in the industry. Unfortunately, a Huawei spokesperson said that the company has no further comments regarding this matter for now.

As per Jason Low, a Canalys analyst, “The whole industry is expecting [wearable] products which can really help consumers better manage their health [concerns], especially chronic diseases that both young and old people are likely to get. But there is still a long way to go because this requires a lot of R&D investment, as well as cooperation between smart hardware and technology companies.” Back in Q3 of 2020, Huawei was the world’s 3rd largest wearables maker, although, the US trade restrictions have hampered its ability to supply hardware and software components for its core smartphone and networking business operations.

The company’s CEO and Founder, Ren Zhengfei previously stated that the company must stay committed to its research and development, focus on profits and even called for decentralization for survival during this time. Currently, Huawei has over 13 research centers across the globe that work on its smart wearable designs, development of software and hardware, and are even working on health care as well.

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Many Huawei wearables users have recently started facing issues regarding the products they are using. People went on the company’s official forum to report on the Huawei Health app not working, which is needed to use Huawei accessories with other brands of smartphones. The company has given out the solution that now requires users to download and install the Health app again but through their proprietary AppGallery.

For those unaware, AppGallery is a part of Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) and is the company’s version of Google’s Play Store. The Chinese tech giant launched the service after losing official Google services support back in 2019. Now, the company is asking users to again download the Huawei Health app through its AppGallery, which also needs to be installed and can be found on the official Huawei website.

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Many Samsung, OnePlus and Google Pixel users reported on facing trouble with their Huawei smart bands and smartwatches. These handsets previously did not require the Huawei Health app from the AppGallery to work but it seems the company has made it necessary. At the moment, Huawei’s version of an app store is still severely lacking in many popular applications, especially the ones owned by Google. While this hasn’t been an issue for Chinese users, the overseas market has to deal with quite a bit of hassle.

The move from the Chinese vendor could have been an attempt to inflate its AppGallery userbase for healthier numbers from across the globe, but that is just speculation. Regardless, Huawei wearables users that use smartphones from other brands are now required to download their services even if they like it or not.

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(Via)

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Latest research data released by market research firm IDC shows that Apple continues its dominance of the wearable market. However, the gap continues to shrink as Samsung and Huawei rapidly mount pressure on the US giant with impressive shipments.

According to the report, Samsung and Huawei have boosted their figures by a significantly higher degree than Apple during Q1, 2019 in the wearable market. Embattled Chinese giant Huawei dominated the industry in terms of growth and was able to triple its sales and thus, double its market share compared to Q1 2018. Huawei recorded a massive growth of 282.2%, shipping an estimated 5 million units of wearable devices globally. On the other and, Apple shipped 12.8 million and Xiaomi 6.6 million units. Samsung shipped an estimated 4.3 million units and Fitbit completed the top 5 with a total shipment of 2.9 million wearables.

All five wearable device manufacturers recorded year-on-year growth, shipping a grand total of 49.6 million unit shipments, which is up 55.2% from the same period last year. Fitbit reported the lowest surge of the top five vendors which is 35.7%, while Apple’s growth rate was 49.5%.

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Apple Inc has seen a decline in its market share in smartphones as well, especially in markets like China and India. Where Huawei has toppled it from the second spot, while Samsung still retains the number one spot with the lead getting narrow by the day.

According to a statement by Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC Mobile Device Trackers; “The elimination of headphone jacks and the increased usage of smart assistants both inside and outside the home have been driving factors in the growth of ear-worn wearables.” He added, “Looking ahead, this will become an increasingly important category as a major platform and device makers use ear-worn devices as an on-ramp to entice consumers into an ecosystem of wearable devices that complement the smartphone but also offer the ability to leave the phone behind when necessary.”

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(source, via)

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