REN Zhengfei Makes TIME Magazine's 2019 list of Most Influential People

Healthcare, Technology, Financials Author: Zekun Wang Apr 22, 2019 11:30 AM (GMT+8)

On Apr 18, 2019, TIME magazine published “100 most influential people in 2019”. REN Zhengfei (任正非), the founder and CEO of Huawei, was selected into the “Titans” list.

REN Zhengfei in TIME Magazine. Photo: Credit to Huawei

On Apr 18, 2019, TIME magazine published “100 most influential people in 2019”. REN Zhengfei (任正非), the founder and CEO of Huawei, was selected into the “Titans” list. Charlie Campbell, TIME’s reporter in eastern Aisa said that REN Zhengfei was no computer prodigy when he founded Huawei with a USD 5,600 investment in 1987. Yet his stewardship helped transform Huawei into the world’s biggest telecoms equipment firm, with USD 107 billion in revenue and customers in 170 countries and regions in 2018.

Apart from publishing different models of smartphones, Huawei also provides telecom equipment to different countries. The honor from TIME magazine doesn’t make Huawei be proud, however, Huawei has a strong sense of crisis and even worrying whether it could survive. Recently, Huawei is trying to gain support from governments and telecom carriers globally, in order to break the obstruction of the U.S. government. On April 18, 2019, a Germany magazine said that Huawei provides a “no-spy agreement” to the Germany government in order to guarantee the safety of the construction of the 5G infrastructure in Germany.

The agreement guarantees that Huawei will not install any back door in its 5G network equipment. In March 2019, the Germany government settled a stricter requirement for telecom equipment providers instead of setting a special standard for Huawei. The supervision department of Germany government said that the same rules are applied to all the services providers. Recently, lots of Germany officials said that Germany will not ban any telecom equipment manufacturer, that’s not in keeping with the Germany law. On the other hand, the Germany government also said that banning Huawei would be harmful to Germany’s economic benefits. Merkel, the prime minister of Germany, also emphasized that Germany will not ban any specific telecom equipment provider.

The series environment forced Huawei to publish reform policies. In early 2019, Huawei announced to put the Internet safety and privacy protection as the maximum program of the group. In the next 5 years, Huawei would invest USD 2 billion to improve software engineering ability and strengthen its examine mechanism to promote the safety of the products. On Apr 4, 2019, Huawei published the reform strategies for its consumer business. With the further authorization of the consumer business, Huawei wants to achieve a revenue of USD 100 billion in the next 3 years and USD 150 billion in the next 5 years.

Huawei used a broken airplane to reply to the honor of TIME Magazine. In the picture, Huawei’s plane has a lot of bullet scars and may not make a return voyage successfully. The hat from TIME Magazine looks funny, which may make the voyage of Huawei more dangerous. Huawei always has a strong sense of crisis and be apathy to honors and achievements. With this quality, Huawei keeps inputting in the research and development of technology and is always well-prepared for the new challenges of 5G time.