Chinese telecom and smartphone giant Huawei is releasing the first cryptocurrency app on its AppGallery, Bloomberg reported.
Alejandro de la Torre, BTC.com’s vice president of business operations, told Bloomberg that Huawei smartphone users would be able to download BTC.com’s bitcoin wallet on their devices, starting Friday May 11.
According to the AppGallery website, “Huawei AppGallery will be pre-installed on all new Huawei and Honor phones…and will be rolled out to older devices during Q2 2018.”
The current restrictions imposed by the Chinese government on Android’s Google Play Store and Apple’s iTunes, are a major roadblock to accessing apps such as BTC.com bitcoin wallet.
“It’s a good opportunity to tap into the Chinese market,” de la Torre said. “The use of cashless payments with apps is very big and the traditional banking system is lacking, so there’s a good use case for crypto payments to grow there.”
The Chinese government moved to ban cryptocurrency trading platforms and initial coin offering (ICO) activities last year. However, in a recently published report, Chinese state media outlet, Voice of China, has stated that domestic crypto exchanges and ICOs to continue to operate despite the ban.
Last month, Huawei launched its blockchain-as-a service (BaaS) platform – ‘Blockchain Service’ or BCS – which would help companies build smart contracts on top a distributed ledger network for a number of use cases.