In China, the majority of employees of device maker Huawei are already back at work following a nationwide COVID-19 shutdown.
While most of Europe’s population are currently only a couple of weeks into their own government-imposed Coronavirus quarantines, Huawei, which has just reported revenue of around $123 billion for 2019, is not allowing the crisis to curtail its global expansion.
The company has just launched its music streaming service Huawei Music in Europe. The service is fully licensed by Universal, Sony and Warner, with over 50 million tracks and 1.2m albums in its library.
Huawei Music has long been available in China, while in March 2018 plans were announced for a launch in South Africa.
According to a Huawei press release, the music app was already “being used by 160 million people” worldwide before arriving in Europe. (If that figure sounds a mite inflated, consider that Huawei also claims that “more than 3 billion of the world’s population uses Huawei’s products and services”… and that Huawei sold more smartphones globally than Apple did last year.)
Huawei Music is now officially available across 16 European countries, including the UK, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Sweden and France.
Huawei says that it plans to gradually expand the service to remaining countries across Europe in the coming months.
“We have made Huawei Music free for 3 months for new subscribers in the hope it will bring some joy at this time.”
Jervis Su, Huawei
Huawei Music is available in Europe for a monthly subscription of €9.99 – with the first three months given away free for those who subscribe before April 26.
Jervis Su, Vice President of Mobile Services, Huawei Consumer Business Group, said: “We have made Huawei Music free for 3 months for new subscribers in the hope it will bring some joy at this time.
“Huawei Music is [just] one of the mobile services we are rapidly building to offer the first real alternative to smartphone users in ten years.”
The service in Europe offers personalized playlists and daily recommendations, as well as interesting features such as a ‘Party Mode’ which allows users to connect Huawei smartphones to play the same song simultaneously.
There’s also a built-in Huawei Listen 3D equalizer, so users can experience virtual surround sound through their earphones.
All Huawei devices in Europe operating on the (Android) mobile operating system EMUI 4.0 and above should already have received a Huawei Music in-app notification or system push notification about the availability of the music service.
Naturally, Huawei says that its music service has been designed to “work seamlessly” with all Huawei smartphones and tablets.
In the background, the Chinese company’s increasingly dominant position in the global telecommunications market has of course been met with resistance by the US government, which blacklisted Huawei last year over national security concerns.
As reported by CNBC today, the company has said that the blacklisting directly resulted in a $12 billion revenue shortfall last year.
Rival streaming service Spotifyended December 2019 with 124m Premium subscribers and 271m total Monthly Active Users (MAUs) worldwide.Music Business Worldwide
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