Since their introduction back in 2009, push notifications have become one of the most important and powerful mobile messaging tools for brands—allowing marketers to highlight breaking news, showcase high-profile content releases, and promote flash sales, among other use cases. If you’re looking for a convenient way to draw your users’ attention to a specific piece of information or to nudge customers back to your mobile app, push notifications are built to make that happen.

But while push notifications are available across a wide variety of different devices and platforms (including the web), one key capability has been missing—namely, the ability to send mobile push notifications to users engaging with apps on Huawei mobile devices. To fill this gap, Braze has built out support for Huawei push notifications, making it possible for brands to reach users on these devices with urgent, impactful messages.

What Makes Huawei Devices Different When It Comes to Push Notifications?

In general, when we talk about push notifications sent in connection with mobile apps, we’re talking about two very specific types of push: Android and iOS. The vast majority of global smartphones and mobile devices run either Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS mobile operating systems; accordingly, the push notifications that are sent by apps on these operating systems are delivered either via the Apple Push Notification Service (APNs) or Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) service.

However, Huawei mobile devices are a key exception. Back in May 2019, the US government announced restrictions against Huawei, a Chinese company that’s one of the largest global manufacturers of smartphones and other devices. As a result of this move, Huawei was no longer allowed to use Google’s Android operating system in connection with the smartphones and mobile devices it manufactured—that, in turn, meant that brands were no longer able to send push notifications via FCM to users on Huawei devices.

Using Braze Huawei Push Support to Better Reach Your Audience

In response to this unexpected shift in US policy, Huawei launched its own HarmonyOS mobile operating system to run its mobile devices and rolled out Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) to deliver push notifications without leaning on FCM. However, to be able to send push to Huawei device owners, brands needed to leverage a customer engagement platform capable of supporting Huawei push. And that’s where Braze comes in.

To allow the brands that depend on our customer engagement platform to reach their international audiences effectively, Braze built out Huawei push notification support. This feature allows brands to resume reaching customers on Huawei mobile devices by using HMS to deliver push notification campaigns orchestrated via Braze. This functionality is useful for any marketer looking to reach users who own Huawei devices, but is particularly important for brands with significant audiences in Asia, where Huawei is one of the most successful mobile device vendors.

Final Thoughts

By making it possible to reach users on Huawei devices, this feature expands the reach of the Braze platform’s already extensive push notification capabilities, which stretch across iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, all major web browsers (including Chrome and Safari), and Android TV and FireOS devices.

Interested in learning more about push notifications and how they can drive customer engagement, monetization, and retention? Check out our exclusive guide: “Push Notifications: What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Matter.”