PRESS: Huawei to preinstall Russia’s Sberbank online app on phones

MOSCOW, May 11 (PRIME) -- China’s Huawei will install on its smartphones, excluding low-priced models, a mobile application Sberbank Online of Russia’s biggest bank Sberbank, which will allow clients of the bank to pay for services, remit money and analyze spending, business daily Vedomosti reported Wednesday.

Sberbank raises the number of users of its mobile application: it wants the bulk of its clients to switch to mobile services and develops contacts with smartphone makers, a bank spokesperson said.

If a smartphone owner is not a Sberbank client, they can order a debit card online and receive it in the bank’s office.

According to data of handset retailer Svyaznoy, there were 290,000 Huawei smartphones sold in the country, or 1.1% of all sales in units.

Representatives of Huawei attributed the preinstallation of the Sberbank application to the creation of an ecosystem for the client’s best comfort. Only applications with a high local demand are preinstalled.

The partners did not disclose any conditions of cooperation, but it is usually based on revenue sharing: an application owner pays a smartphone maker for every activated application, sources in two companies-producers told the daily. One more option is a joint marketing activity, when an application owner promotes a smartphone maker by its channels, one of the sources said.

At present, Sberbank has 13.9 million mobile users, whose number rises by 800,000 people per month. The service’s preinstallation on smartphones of big makers will boost the growth by 20% more, or by 160,000 people per month, the bank’s spokesperson said.

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