REN Zhengfei was interviewed by a reporter of CNBC and they talked about the relationship between Huawei and the Chinese government, Huawei’s 5G plan in Europe, and the future strategies of Huawei.
Recently, Arjun Kharpal, the reporter of CNBC, interviewed REN Zhengfei (任正非), who is the founder and CEO of Huawei. During the interview, they talked about the relationship between Huawei and the Chinese government, Huawei’s 5G plan in Europe, and the future strategies of Huawei.
Previously, countries such as France and Germany were forced by the U.S. government to stop the cooperation with Huawei, in terms of the construction of their 5G network. The U.S. government said that Huawei may transfer the confidential information of these European countries to the Chinese government, and even threatened that once Germany kept cooperating with Huawei, the U.S. would cancel the sharing of strategic information with it.
REN Zhengfei replied to these problems. REN said that “Our customers have a deep understanding of Huawei because we have cooperated almost 30 years.” Meanwhile, REN believed that “the customers have the right to choose the productions. They would not give Huawei up just because of the politicians’ ideas.” REN acknowledged that in Europe, Huawei may face some challenges and difficulties, but in the long-term, t would not have that great influences.
REN showed some data to prove his idea. In Q1 2019, Huawei’s sales revenue for its consumer products increased by more than 70%. The revenue of Internet facilities, though decreased by 1.5% in 2018, in Q1 2019, that number increased by 15%. These data show that Huawei is still increasing not declining, which makes REN believes that the political policies do not have great influences on Huawei.
REN suggested that all the European countries should concern all of the choices they are facing. Huawei supports Germany’s idea that a global convention should be settled to forbid all the facility providers to install the back door while offering facilities and services. Huawei wants to sign a convention like this to prevent the spy actions, and Huawei will always obey the safety standard of Europe, and GDPR.
REN also said that in the next 5 years, Huawei will invest more than USD 100 billion on R&D in order to rebuild Huawei’s network. Specifically, Huawei will build the simplest network in order to guarantee Internet safety and protect the users’ private information. Despite U.S. efforts to constrain Huawei, its annual revenue rose almost 20% in 2018 to USD 105 billion. REN predicts sales could triple over the next five years should Huawei overcome U.S. interference.
With the approaching of the 5G time, Huawei will keep on pursuing better technologies. The 5G technology could tether anything fitted with a chip to wireless networks. In this way, the self-driving cars, remote surgeries, real-time communication would all be possible and reachable in the future. Huawei has spent 14% of its annual revenue on R&D in each of the last two years, dan dedicates 45% of its workforce to R&D. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, in last year, Huawei filed more patents than any other company in the world, with 5,405, which is nearly double that of the closest rival, Mitsubishi Electric.
China has already gained a leading position in 5G technology, and Huawei, as the leading 5G telecom company in China, offered a lot of contributions to the research and development of the 5G technology.