Tricolor launches OTT service on Huawei AppGallery

Russian pay TV provider Tricolor TV has launched an app for the Huawei AppGallery, giving it a presence in the app store of the country’s best-selling smartphones.

The app enables users to watch TV shows and movies on Huawei and Honor-branded smartphones in the country.

Tricolor TV said that Huawei and Honor smartphones had a 30.4% share of the Russian smartphone market in the fourth quarter of last year. Tricolor, which primarily distributes its pay TV service via satellite, has a growing online TV base. The group said that it had 1.2 million online TV customers at the end of last year, accounting for about 10% of its entire customer base.

Huawei and Honor smartphone users with Tricolor subscriptions will have access to about 120 channels, including 45 Hd services. The app also provides content recommendation and advanced TV functionality such as rewind, pause live TV and catch-up.

Users also have access to the Tricolor movies-on-demand service as well as live broadcasts of sports competitions.

Tricolor’s Cinema and TV app launched on Android TVs in August 2018, with apps for iOS and Android mobile devices and Samsung Tizen smart TVs following in December of that year.

“Tricolor is looking to create easy access for all Russians to the digital environment from any device, anywhere and anytime. A logical step in solving this problem was the inclusion of the application in the Huawei AppGallery. This opened access to Tricolor Cinema and TV for the audience of the number one smartphone brand in the country,” said Andrei Nesterov, deputy general director for strategic and operational marketing at Tricolor.