Chinese multinational technology company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (/ˈhwɑːˌweɪ/; Chinese: 华为; [xwǎ.wèi] (listen)) is a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong, South China. It was founded by Ren Zhengfei in 1987.[4]
Native name | 华为技术有限公司 |
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Romanized name | Huáwèi jìshù yǒuxiàn gōngsī |
Company type | Private |
ISIN | HK0000HWEI11 |
Industry |
|
Founded | 15 September 1987 |
Founder | Ren Zhengfei |
Headquarters | , |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Ren Zhengfei (CEO) Liang Hua (chairman) Meng Wanzhou (deputy chairwoman & CFO) He Tingbo (Director) |
Products |
|
Brands | Huawei |
Revenue | CN¥642.3 billion (US$87.8 billion) (2022)[1] |
47,515,000,000 renminbi (2016) | |
CN¥35.6 billion (US$5.2 billion) (2022) | |
Total assets | CN¥876.854 billion (US$140 billion) (2022) |
Number of employees | 207,000 (2023)[2] |
Parent | Huawei Investment & Holding[3] |
Subsidiaries | Caliopa Chinasoft International FutureWei Technologies HexaTier HiSilicon iSoftStone |
Website | www |
Huawei | |||||||||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 华为 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Traditional Chinese | 華為 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Literal meaning | "Splendid Achievement" or "Chinese Achievement" | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | |||||||||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 华为技术有限公司 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 華為技術有限公司 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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The name Huawei may be translated as "splendid act" or "China is able"; Hua can mean "splendid" or "China", while wei can mean "action" or "achievement".
Huawei has had a lot of problems in some countries. They have mainly had problems with the United States government. The US government said that the Chinese government could use Huawei's 5G technology to spy on people. Because of this, the US government does not want other countries to use technology by Huawei or ZTE. In May 2019, the US government put Huawei on a blacklist. This meant that Huawei could not do business with American companies.[5][6]
According to the company founder Ren Zhengfei, the name Huawei comes from a slogan he saw on a wall, Zhonghua youwei meaning "China has achievements" (Chinese: 中华有为; pinyin: Zhōng huá yǒu wéi), when he was starting up the company and needed a name.[7] Zhonghua or Hua means China,[8] while youwei means "promising/to show achievements".[9][10] Huawei has also been translated as "splendid achievement" or "China's legacy", which are possible readings of the name.[11]
In Chinese pinyin, the name is Huáwéi,[12] and pronounced [xwǎwěi] in Mandarin Chinese; in Cantonese, the name is transliterated with Jyutping as Waa4-wai4 and pronounced [wȁːwɐ̏i]. However, the pronunciation of Huawei by non-Chinese varies in other countries, for example "Hoe-ah-wei" in Belgium and the Netherlands.[13]
The company had considered changing the name in English out of concern that non-Chinese people may find it hard to pronounce,[14] but decided to keep the name, and launched a brand recognition campaign instead to encourage a pronunciation closer to "Wah-Way" using the words "Wow Way".[15][16] Ren states, "We will not change the name of our brand and will teach foreigners how to pronounce it. We have to make sure they do not pronounce it like 'Hawaii.'"[17]: 85
In the 1980s, the Chinese government endeavored to overhaul the nation's underdeveloped telecommunications infrastructure. A core component of the telecommunications network was telephone exchange switches, and in the late 1980s, several Chinese research groups endeavored to acquire and develop the technology, usually through joint ventures with foreign companies.
Ren Zhengfei, a former deputy director of the People's Liberation Army engineering corps, founded Huawei in 1987 in Shenzhen. The company reports that it had RMB 21,000 (about $5,000 at the time) in registered capital from Ren Zhengfei and five other investors at the time of its founding where each contributed RMB 3,500.[18] These five initial investors gradually withdrew their investments in Huawei. The Wall Street Journal has suggested, however, that Huawei received approximately "$46 billion in loans and other support, coupled with $25 billion in tax cuts" since the Chinese government had a vested interest in fostering a company to compete against Apple and Samsung.[19][20]
Ren sought to reverse engineer foreign technologies with local researchers. China borrowed liberally from Qualcomm and other industry leaders (PBX as an example) in order to enter the market. At a time when all of China's telecommunications technology was imported from abroad, Ren hoped to build a domestic Chinese telecommunications company that could compete with, and ultimately replace, foreign competitors.[21]
During its first several years the company's business model consisted mainly of reselling private branch exchange (PBX) switches imported from Hong Kong.[22][23] Meanwhile, it was reverse-engineering imported switches and investing heavily in research and development to manufacture its own technologies.[22] By 1990 the company had approximately 600 R&D staff and began its own independent commercialization of PBX switches targeting hotels and small enterprises.[24]
In order to grow despite difficult competition from Alcatel, Lucent, and Nortel Networks, in 1992 Huawei focused on low-income and difficult to access market niches.[17]: 12 Huawei's sales force traveled from village to village in underdeveloped regions, gradually moving into more developed areas.[17]: 12
The company's first major breakthrough came in 1993 when it launched its C&C08 program controlled telephone switch. It was by far the most powerful switch available in China at the time. By initially deploying in small cities and rural areas and placing emphasis on service and customizability, the company gained market share and made its way into the mainstream market.[25]
Huawei also won a key contract to build the first national telecommunications network for the People's Liberation Army, a deal one employee described as "small in terms of our overall business, but large in terms of our relationships".[26] In 1994, founder Ren Zhengfei had a meeting with General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin, telling him that "switching equipment technology was related to national security, and that a nation that did not have its own switching equipment was like one that lacked its own military." Jiang reportedly agreed with this assessment.[22]
In the 1990s, Canadian telecom giant Nortel outsourced production of their entire product line to Huawei.[27] They subsequently outsourced much of their product engineering to Huawei as well.[28]
Another major turning point for the company came in 1996 when the government in Beijing adopted an explicit policy of supporting domestic telecommunications manufacturers and restricting access to foreign competitors. Huawei was promoted by both the government and the military as a national champion, and established new research and development offices.[22]
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