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Huawei ‘crashes party’ to become largest telecoms kit supplier
Group’s relentless focus has brought success in fields from equipment to Smartphones
Huawei’s unrelenting rise to global dominance in the telecoms equipment market has presented the Chinese company with many challenges — including persuading consumers to pronounce its name “wah-way”, not “who-are-we”.
But this year, the 31-year-old company has come under serious, unprecedented scrutiny, caught in the middle of a trade war between the US and China while concerns mount about the use of its equipment in European telecoms networks.
More recently, the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the company’s chief financial officer, on Saturday has sent shockwaves through the ranks of the telecoms group, where insiders see the move as a personal attack on Ren Zhengfei, the company’s founder and Ms Meng’s father.
Mr Ren founded Huawei in 1987, working out of his flat in Shenzhen and selling landline equipment imported from Hong Kong to mainland China. The former People’s Liberation Army officer quickly built up a substantial business reselling switches in rural Chinese regions that had largely been ignored by established Western companies.
The company later developed its own kit, which was promoted by the Chinese government, and a contract with conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa in 1997 opened the door to selling to Hong Kong and the rest world.
Huawei set up an office in London in 2001 with 30 people. Four years later, it won a landmark deal with BT to supply equipment to the company’s “21st Century Network” overhaul project. The deal paved the way for Huawei to win business with all of Britain’s telecoms providers, as well as many of their European counterparts.
The company was originally seen as a cheap and cheerful manufacturer that competed with its more established rivals. But Huawei has grown to become the world’s largest supplier of telecoms equipment, and now argues that it has the most advanced equipment available for the fifth generation of mobile technology, or 5G.
Huawei prides itself on the brute force of its research and development team, which numbers almost 80,000 workers. Shift changes at its Shenzhen headquarters have been likened to London’s Wembley Stadium emptying and refilling again.
Ben Verwaayen, the former BT chief executive who signed the landmark Huawei deal in 2005, recalled first meeting Mr Ren at an opulent chalet outside the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2011. Mr Verwaayen was head of Alcatel-Lucent, the Franco-American telecoms equipment company, at the time.
He said that Alcatel-Lucent had a superior product and market understanding, but Huawei “ran circles around us” on getting their products to market.
“They were relentless in focus, relentless on price,” he said. “That is how they built their empire. But even then they had one eye on the bigger guys like Apple.”
Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
Who is arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou
Huawei only began selling smartphones in 2009. In the second quarter of this year, it overtook Apple to become the world’s second-largest smartphone maker.
Duncan Clark, founder of BDA, a Beijing-based technology consultancy, sees Huawei as the ultimate disrupter that shook up the US telecoms market before falling foul of the authorities.
“They crashed the party of vendors and operators, those golf club relationships,” he said. “They did that by moving faster and offering good quality stuff cheaper. And in that process, they have been throwing a light on the inefficiencies of the US economy, and posing systemic challenges to US tech businesses.”
Inside the company, Mr Ren enjoys cult status. He has told staff to develop a “wolf-like” nature, and his instructions are understood to be followed, even if that means working long days or going on hardship postings.
“Thirty-something strong men, don’t work hard, just want to count money in bed, is that possible?,” Mr Ren said in the memo seen by Reuters. “Huawei will not pay for those that don’t work hard.”
Mr Ren’s past as a People’s Liberation Army officer is often cited by western critics as a warning that the company’s gear might be vulnerable to Chinese military spying. Rival ZTE, another Chinese telecoms equipment company that has grown rapidly and fallen foul of US authorities, is often subject to similar criticisms.
But Huawei bristles at being compared to ZTE, arguing that it has no direct links to the Chinese government or military, and is owned by its employees, while ZTE has a clear affiliation with the state and heavy reliance on orders from state-owned Chinese telecoms operators.
Convincing the world that is truly independent may be Huawei’s biggest challenge yet.
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發表於 2018-12-7 16:32:28
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