Jamie Gonzalo, Huawei's vice president of Consumer Mobile Services in Europe, has revealed in an interview with the Russian media outlet RBK that the company will be launching its own Huawei Video service for viewing films, documentaries, and series from streaming companies in Russia and several other countries in the coming months.
The service will be available for Huawei smartphone users and will feature content from popular streaming services, including Russian ones. Gonzalo explained that the company is not planning to compete with the existing streaming giants, who create their own content, like Netflix or Spotify.
The Huawei Video service was launched three years ago, but became available outside China in 2018, and then only in Spain and Italy. Gonzalo didn't specify how many and which countries will receive access to it in the nearest future, apart from Russia.
Chinese tech giant Huawei has been subjected to a major crackdown by Washington this year, banning its equipment from US soil and forbidding American companies from selling their technologies to it. This led to Google denying the Chinese firm access to the Android OS and its web services.
In response, Huawei announced plans to develop its own substitutes for lost apps and even presented a domestically-made operating system – HarmonyOS, which will be shipped with the newest Huawei smart displays, wearables, smart speakers and in-car devices. The company said that the new OS is lighter and faster than Google's Android.