How the winner of Apps UP 2021 achieved innovative success and made social impact with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS)

SINGAPORE, July 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Plano - a Singapore-based health application that offers technological solutions to improve children's eye health was the winner of Huawei's Apps UP 2021 app innovation contest for "Best Social Impact App" and "Most Popular App" awards. The app has achieved significant increase in acquiring new users by deepening their collaborations with Huawei mobile ecosystem.

Plano's vision is to improve eye health globally by equipping parents with the tools to prevent myopia amongst children. With Plano, parents are equipped with a software that detects the distance between a user's face and screen, improving eye health and reducing myopia in children. Plano saw Huawei's technological capabilities and its all-scenario ecosystem as an opportunity to support their vision, and embarked on this journey of development with Huawei.

Plano's journey to success with HMS

Plano was first published in AppGallery in May 2021 after integrating their app into HMS Core - the Huawei set of app development framework. HMS Core has been an essential contributor to enable a wide range of app functions in Plano such as remote device lock, location tracking, and app or browser blocking.

"What made our life a lot easier working with Huawei was the several kits available to enable different functionalities on the operating system. The Machine Learning Kit (ML Kit), for example, enables face-to-screen detection which is incredibly important to ensure that users are holding their phone at a correct distance," said Mohamed Dirani, the Founding Managing Director of Plano.

After onboarding to AppGallery, Plano continues to seek improvement to elevate their user experience and boost app growth. The app seized the opportunity to join Apps UP 2021, the Huawei Global App Innovation Contest, by further integrating with HMS Core kits to unlock more app features and compete for attractive regional prizes.

Plano decided to extend their app services from smartphone to smartwatch, to achieve multi touchpoint presence and serve cross-device users. This is made possible by integrating with "Wear Engine", for the app to be compatible with smartwatches HUAWEI WATCH GT 3 and HUAWEI WATCH 3. With the watch app, parents can now easily check their children's device usage directly from their wrists. This helped Plano broaden their user base across Huawei's hardware and software ecosystem, along with achieving their core vision of providing eye education and awareness into every household.

Plano's outstanding solutions to preserve eye-health across different scenarios made them one of the top winners in Apps UP 2021, winning for themselves the "Best Social Impact App" and "Most Popular App" awards.

"The Apps UP competition allows for unprecedented collaboration between app developers and the Huawei mobile services team. This is extremely helpful for developers to familiarise themselves with the Huawei ecosystem and is an efficient way to pick up tech knowledge in a fast-moving industry," shared Kevin Li, Chief Technology Officer at Plano.

Capturing synergies within HMS ecosystem  

Beyond technological capabilities, Huawei's comprehensive ecosystem offerings provide Plano with continuous business growth. In August 2021, the eye-care app ran a joint marketing campaign with HUAWEI AppGallery to drive awareness and downloads. The campaign made use of Huawei owned displayed channels within AppGallery which drove excellent results for Plano. In the first week of the campaign, the daily average downloads increased by 8.5 times. 

Encouraged by the results, Plano continues to forge deeper collaborations in HMS ecosystem. In December, Plano invested in HUAWEI Ads with the objective to increase reservations on its eye examination platform - planoEyecheck. Leveraging on the ad channels including Petal Search and other HUAWEI Ads integrated third-party apps, the second campaign boosted the platform's reservation by 15 times within the campaign period.

Calling all app developers to participate in Apps UP 2022 contest

Plano's success with HMS ecosystem lies heavily in its focus on app innovation, where Apps UP played a key role in facilitating the process. Now, Apps UP 2022 contest is back this year, aiming to inspire and support developers in adopting HMS Core Kits to create innovative apps.

In the APAC edition, twenty outstanding apps will be selected based on app design, user experience, innovativeness and business value to win from a total prize pool of US$200,000. Talented developers within the region simply have to submit an app that has been integrated with at least one HMS Core Kit before 9 October to be eligible for the contest.

To register for Apps UP 2022, please visit: https://bit.ly/APPSUPPR_APAC 

To view Plano's story, please visit: Plano x Huawei Mobile Services

SOURCE Huawei Mobile Services