- Qwant will be preconfigured in the new Huawei P40 smartphones.
- The French search engine has embarked on an acceleration of its “mobile first” strategy to boost its audience.
It is a nice boost for the search engine "respectful of personal data" and born in Nice in 2011. In the P40, its new high-end smartphone which will be marketed in certain European countries, the Chinese manufacturer Huawei decided to do without Google to prefer Qwant, preconfigured on its browser. The opportunity for the European start-up to gain exposure.
And this partnership has much to cheer Qwant officials after a zone of turbulence following the withdrawal in January of co-founder Eric Leandri. The new CEO Jean-Claude Ghinozzi sees in it an announcement "very important and commercially very structuring" while the search engine has embarked on a "mobile first" strategy, mobile first.
Will this partnership be able to extend to other models of the Chinese brand?
It should indeed evolve. For the moment, it applies to the entire P range, which will be marketed in France, Germany and Italy. It will surely be able to develop on other models but especially in other countries, in particular Anglo-Saxons, as soon as we have the technical capacities to provide the best levels of response with our search engine in these destinations.
Is the presence of your “anti-tracking” search engine a way for Huawei to respond to the United States, which accuses it of spying on its users?
Our agreement with the brand, concluded with Huawei Europe, dates from November 2018. It was therefore sealed before this problem, [the American government having announced a series of sanctions against the manufacturer in spring 2019]. Huawei's idea was already at the time to offer alternative content [to the Google environment], added value and secure content. On equipped mobiles, I can guarantee that requests via our search engine go through Qwant's servers and not through Huawei's. We do not share data on what is happening on Qwant.
Does the partnership include a financial investment on your part?
It is balanced. As we do with other partners, part of the income obtained on certain paid links will be donated to Huawei.
This announcement confirms in any case the strengthening of your development strategy focused on mobile…
The origin of Qwant is the desktop, the desktop computers. Mobile operating systems have always been very locked to their search engine. The market is starting to open on Android. So now is the time to focus our resources on mobility. It is on these uses that there are still many opportunities for growth. In February, we had 5 million unique visitors, including 1.8 million on mobile. We would like to arrive at a 50/50 ratio very quickly. In one year, we gained 20% of audience in general and 50% on the mobile.
You were to launch Qwant Art, a search engine devoted to culture, by setting up in Cannes. Where is this project at?
It is no longer a priority and has been suspended. Choices have been made. In particular for the development of Qwant maps on which we continue to work. Then, we decided to focus resources and energies on consolidating the existing. The idea is above all to strengthen our technological capacity, our quality of service. We must also continue on our market offer, on the shopping part so that we can increase our income. We need to focus our attention on it.
Web
Qwant's Cannes project falls (for the moment) into the water, the town hall remains open
High-Tech
Qwant Maps, a new service to compete with Google Maps
- Huawei
- Smartphone
- Nice
- Search engine
- High-Tech