Muscat: Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei has reiterated that the Chinese technological giant is in a strong position to move ahead despite its recent political troubles in the United States.
While answering questions about the impact of the White House’s recent executive order, Zhengfei said: “What the US will do is out of our control. To us, the most important thing is to do our job well. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the US companies that we work with. Over these 30 years, they have helped us to grow into what we are today. As you know, most of the companies that provide consulting services to Huawei are based in the US, including dozens of companies like IBM and Accenture. In the face of the recent crisis, I can feel these companies' sense of justice and sympathy towards us.”
However, Zhengfei remained optimistic that the ban may not impact Huawei’s business much. "Our growth will slow down, though not by as much as everyone imagines. In the first quarter of this year, our revenue grew 39% over the same period last year. This rate decreased to 25% in April, and may continue decreasing towards the end of this year. But the US ban will not lead to negative growth or harm the development of our industry.”
Zhengfei also discussed the supply of raw materials and finished products from international partners to Huawei.
“Our company will not end up with an extreme supply shortage. We have got well prepared. Even if there is an insufficient supply from our partners, we will face no problems. This is because we can manufacture all the high-end chips we need ourselves,” Zhengfei said.
"As long as these companies can obtain approval from Washington, Huawei will continue to buy in large volumes from them.
“It may be the case that they cannot obtain approval quickly. We have ways to go through this transition period. Once approval is granted, we will maintain our normal trade with these US companies and work together to build an information society for humanity. We don't want to work alone,” he added.
When asked about why the US is targeting Huawei, Zhengfei responded: “I don't know exactly what [those US] politicians are thinking. I think we should not be the target of US-led campaigns just because we are ahead of the US.”
Expressing confidence of Huawei’s performance in Europe, Zhengfei said: “Europe will not follow in the footsteps of the US, and the majority of US companies are communicating closely with us. We will certainly be able to continue serving our customers. Our mass production capacity is huge, and adding Huawei to the Entity List won't have a huge impact on us. We are making progress in bidding worldwide.”
Zhengfei said that the ban will certainly prove to be a minor setback, but remained positive that in sectors where Huawei has the most advanced technologies, at least in the 5G sector, there “won't be much impact.” He also said that Huawei’s competitors, "won't be able to catch up with it within two to three years."
"5G standards are widely considered to have a huge impact on society,” Zhengfei added.
"The company appears to be well prepared for the future in terms of technology innovation and R&D. Huawei has 26 centres of expertise for R&D globally, over 700 mathematicians, 800 physicists, and 120 chemists working at Huawei, according to Ren. He further noted that Huawei have the most 5G standard-essential patents in the world – about 27 per cent of the total,” he said.
