China’s top smartphone maker, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., is hoping to throw off the shackles of the Android operating system with the launch of its own version of Google Mobile Services.

The replacement set of services, called Huawei Mobile Services, would allow the company’s smartphones to run their own versions of Google’s suite of services, which includes applications such as Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Maps and the Google Play Store.

In addition, Huawei has started engaging with Indian developers, offering them lucrative incentives to build localized mobile services for its smartphones in the country.

In an interview Tuesday with The Economic Times, Charles Peng, chief executive officer of Huawei and Honor India, said the company is in talks with the developers of the top 150 applications in India and is confident of ensuring their availability in its own app store by next year.

“We have our own HMS and are trying to build a mobile ecosystem,” Peng told the Times. “Most of the key apps such as navigation, payments, gaming and messaging will be ready by December end.”

Huawei is launching HMS after restrictions were imposed by the U.S. government on its ability to do business with Google LLC and other American technology firms. As a result, the company is unable to sell new phones that feature Google’s services.

The ban on doing business with Huawei was imposed in May following suspicions that the firm has close ties with the Chinese government and therefore represents a threat to U.S. national security.

“Consumers won’t see a difference between GMS and HMS,” Peng claimed.

As for developers, Huawei is offering incentives of up to $17,000 to integrate their applications with HMS. The hope is that if it can get enough developers onboard it will be able to offer a suite of applications that’s similar enough to what’s on an Android phone. Later, Huawei plans to launch similar initiatives in other countries too, Peng added.

“In every country, we will focus on bringing top 100-150 apps to customers through HMS,” Peng said. He added that the apps created by Indian developers would also be made available to users in Europe and other global markets.

Experts remain skeptical of Huawei’s plans however, and it’s not difficult to see why. The company still needs to come up with alternatives to apps like Gmail, Maps and YouTube, and then it needs to persuade people to use them. That’s a tough ask. The amount of content on YouTube, for example, is unrivaled, while Gmail and Maps both come with dozens of important features not found in rival apps.

“It is going to be very tough for Huawei/Honor to sell the phone based on their own suite,” said International Data Corp. analyst Navkender Singh. “They would need to double down on efforts for India.”

“It’s a chicken vs. egg problem when you want or have to establish a new mobile operating system,” said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. “Applications are the degree of attraction as we have learnt from history with BlackBerry. But that failed because BlackBerry did not manage to build attractive headsets. Huawei and Oppo on the other hand have the headsets, but not the apps. For the companies this is bad news as it introduces complexity for enterprise work platforms and strategy.”

Photo: Connection Japan/Flickr