The founder of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei calls on his employees to accelerate the group’s diversification. The aim is to circumvent US sanctions on smartphones by making more products yourself.
The telecom giant has been suffering from the trade war between China and the United States for years. Washington blacklisted the company in 2019, barring Huawei from accessing US technologies for its products, including the electronic chips essential to its phones, as well as software services like Google’s. This situation also weighed heavily on Huawei’s sales.
In an internal note to his employees seen by AFP, Huawei founder Ren Zhenfei is now calling for a total transformation of the group. Among other things, the autonomy of its software must be accelerated. “For example, the United States will have little control over our future development,” he writes. In doing so, he repeats statements he already made last month.
That own software includes an internal operating system, HarmonyOS, of which a new version will be released next week. The successor will be available worldwide on all Huawei phones on June 2. The new system was partly developed because the sanctions on Huawei mean that their devices will no longer receive Android updates.
The Chinese group, therefore, had to offer its own alternative quickly. “Attack is the best defence,” Ren Zhengfei said at the time, promising Huawei phone users a new operating system that “adapts and embraces the world.”
The American sanctions are also forcing the Shenzhen (South China) -based company to accelerate its diversification in sectors towards cloud and 5G technology and self-driving cars, for example. According to a study by Canalys released last month, Huawei sales in China fell 50% yearly in the first quarter.
In its market, the group is now behind its fellow countrymen Vivo and Oppo but remains ahead of the American Apple. Huawei was number one in the industry until recently.