On December 11th, Huawei Mobile Cloud Services unveiled its “2024 Pioneer List” digital lifestyle content indicator. Among the announcements, the “AppGallery Awards Annual Influential Apps and Games” deserves special attention – this marks the first annual app rankings since the commercial launch of native HarmonyOS.
The list of winners reflects the highlights and trends of native HarmonyOS applications in terms of user experience, visual design, innovation, and entertainment value. What’s particularly interesting is the organization of this list: rather than a mere ranking, it serves as a retrospective of lifestyle trends and a “Michelin Guide” showcasing the evolution of app culture – essentially a new business card presented by the native HarmonyOS ecosystem.
The list revealed 18 apps and games across different categories, connected by six major lifestyle trends that we can all recognize and relate to.
Three Core Values Behind Annual Influence
The 2024 AppGallery Awards focuses on tangible emerging trends around us and their impact on users’ daily lives and application forms. How do these essential daily apps intertwined with trends change our lives?
Let’s look at the MBTI personality test trend:
When the introvert-extrovert dichotomy became too rigid and zodiac signs too complex, MBTI-based psychological tests and interactive stories swept across all social platforms. The question “Are you an E or I person?” became a common conversation starter, with MBTI’s four letters evolving into a new social currency.
Here, it has defined a new social trend, enabling major social apps to find new ways to interact with users. Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and Zhihu have been particularly responsive to this trend.
The MBTI trend has given users new ways to break the ice and find strong sense of belonging. Celebrities’ MBTI types frequently trend on social media, while various super topics and tags gather like-minded enthusiasts, boosting community engagement. Meanwhile, developers and operators haven’t missed this “tremendous traffic opportunity”: personality test features, MBTI-based social matching mechanisms, and personalized content recommendations have been integrated into products, creating new experiences for both content consumption and creation.
MBTI undoubtedly deserves the title of “Year’s Top Social Trend.” AppGallery Awards’ role is to communicate and advance this trend, making it visible to more developers and inspiring various product design innovations.
This represents the first value of AppGallery Awards: trend spotting.
Beyond trends lies a deeper question: what makes a trend become a trend?
Looking at what drives AIGC’s current popularity, the answer becomes clear: users need “assistants” to help record meetings, organize materials, and draft documents at work, which led to the emergence of iFlytek Spark and AI Writing Monkey; they need a knowledge framework to understand the world, making multimodal large models highly popular – trends emerge in response to actual user needs.
When both needs and products that can meet those needs exist, the final step is connecting them – this is the second value of AppGallery Awards: app guidance.
Good guidance shouldn’t be overly broad but should provide meaningful functions and solutions through themed categories and scenarios. Considering how iFlytek Spark, AI Writing Monkey, and Tongyi can address various specific scenario needs and handle collaborative requirements for each scenario, their selection for AppGallery Awards makes perfect sense.
The third important value conveyed by AppGallery Awards lies in inspiring exploration.
For example, “Wilderness Travel” is my favorite new trend on the list. While everyone has different answers to whether life is wilderness or a set track, when I see this trend and the three apps below it – Fliggy, Ctrip, and Qunar – booking a vacation flight right now might not be a bad choice.
This is the power of “inspiration,” whether it comes from a trending keyword, an app guide, or some undiscovered features and tips – this is crucial for a digital ecosystem with countless apps and endless functions.
While AppGallery Awards is an annual summary of user demand trends, AppGallery’s daily fresh themes bring users repeated trend communications and discussions. It’s through these daily recommended themes that users gradually experience and understand various life trends through specific app experiences, eventually becoming part of these trends; and their newly inspired needs may well become the beginning of the next trend.
We can anticipate that as the native HarmonyOS ecosystem continues to develop, more apps and games worth experiencing will join, users will encounter a broader world of exploration in AppGallery, and more new trends will emerge and influence. This perhaps is where AppGallery’s value lies.
Native HarmonyOS App Ecosystem Forms a Positive Cycle
Going back over a century, the Michelin Guide became the world’s unique dining bestseller due to its careful and distinctive evaluation methods, while restaurants awarded Michelin stars became city landmarks. Food enthusiasts worldwide travel far and wide just to experience these starred establishments.
The guide, restaurants, and diners form a positive cycle that continuously promotes automotive tourism culture, which shares similarities with today’s AppGallery Awards.
Looking at the list of influential apps and games again from this perspective, we can see it’s designed to encourage and inspire HarmonyOS native app developers. AppGallery Awards aims to convey to developers that it’s more than just a “Store,” striving to build an open “Gallery” space that connects users and developers.
We shouldn’t forget one fact: the current native HarmonyOS system was officially released just 50 days ago, and even counting from its first announcement in 2023, it’s only been 16 months. Building an application ecosystem covering tens of thousands of mainstream products and meta-services in such a short time, this “annual award” selection itself is an excellent footnote to the vibrant native HarmonyOS ecosystem.
Every day, AppGallery’s professional editorial team focuses on exploring different thematic stories, presenting them through themed cards, whether it’s in-depth analysis of individual apps or scenario construction combining multiple apps. When individual “stories” string together digital life trends into meaningful narratives, developer and user needs are cleverly linked together.
Taking the newly released 2024 AppGallery Awards as an example, it uses an art gallery animation short to open this card, where each app is an artwork stamped with an official red seal. As more seals are added, the native HarmonyOS premium content ecosystem flourishes.
This is the design logic behind AppGallery – connecting developers and users through rich visual browsing experiences and themed curation recommendations, driving the entire application ecosystem’s development through media-oriented operations.
Although the native HarmonyOS system’s public beta testing period has been short, AppGallery has already created several impressive features.
For instance, while “travel” apps seem to be a mature, standardized red ocean market where it’s difficult to design breakthrough products following conventional thinking, AppGallery attempted to use “urban cycling” as an entry point. Through a cycling guide that makes good use of Xiaohongshu, cycling navigation, Moji Weather, sports and health apps, we can fully experience the unhurried, steady lifestyle proposition behind it.
Clearly, this isn’t a place that solely focuses on “downloads” and “payments,” but rather a collection of stories that attract users to linger, giving developers new opportunities to think about the possibilities hidden behind these themes.
This reminds me of Sotheby’s flagship gallery recently opened in Hong Kong’s Central district, a showcase space for treasures that’s open to the public in Hong Kong’s busiest commercial area.
This seemingly counterintuitive move is actually key to enhancing the auction house’s competitiveness. Traditional auction models usually only have spring and autumn seasons, but establishing a gallery enables year-round themed activities. As more people come to view exhibitions, opportunities for art transactions increase dramatically. This is why major international auction houses all want to secure their own exhibition spaces.
AppGallery’s redesign and refresh follows the same principle – humans have always been storytelling creatures, and a place that continuously provides themed stories becomes a connector between supply and demand.
The coexistence of popular and niche content is normal for exhibitions, and this is also AppGallery’s daily routine. Standing at the intersection of technology and art, whether they are comprehensive leading apps or boutique specialized apps, they all have equal opportunities to be included in daily themed stories and receive rich traffic support.
Pursuing ecosystem balance, diversity, and positive interaction between users and developers – I believe this will be the most unique competitive advantage of the future native HarmonyOS AppGallery.
Not Just a Store, But a Gallery
Chinese people have a tradition of naming things based on their inherent qualities and characteristics.
The “Ancient and Modern Notes” from the Western Jin Dynasty recorded a legend:
Emperor Qin had seven horses, named: Wind Chaser, Rabbit Pursuer, Shadow Stepper, Lightning Follower, Flying Feather, Bronze Sparrow, and Dawn Duck.
Seven names, none mentioning “horse,” yet they describe the spirit of galloping steeds better than any other names could.
Huawei’s choice of “AppGallery” as the name for its app market carries similar intentions.
Here, while the “Store” functionality is undoubtedly important, Huawei places more emphasis on the cultural core that transcends functionality.
At this current point in time, the rapid development of the native HarmonyOS ecosystem is quickly changing the mobile application landscape. From the OpenHarmony Conference in late May to early December, in less than 7 months, the number of native HarmonyOS apps and meta-services has grown from 4,000 to over 15,000, with HarmonyOS developers growing by more than 100,000 per month.
This poses new questions to users and developers: With so many apps and games, how do users find what they need? Among countless applications, how do developers ensure their apps are seen by users?
Huawei’s answer is to take a step forward, using AppGallery’s open, cultural language to build a “community ecosystem” that better serves user needs.
Thus, the newly launched AppGallery re-emphasizes its essence of being “not just a Store, but a Gallery,” gathering “audiences” through regular rich visual experiences and media-style thematic curation. When people and applications meaningfully connect in this immersive public space, the connection of inspiration, creativity, and needs naturally follows. In turn, community growth attracts more people and brands to settle in.
AppGallery, developers, and users form a positive cycle that continuously drives the vibrant development of the application ecosystem.
A year ago, Huawei opened a flagship store in Shanghai’s Taikoo Li Qiantan, creating a “living room” in the bustling city with an open and inclusive space; a year later, the refreshed AppGallery builds a digital lifestyle gallery for developers and users.
Two events happening in two worlds, yet conveying the same values – the emphasis on connection, communication, and sharing, as well as the pursuit of user experience and service.