Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. is a Chinese multinational technology company that provides telecommunications equipment and sells consumer electronics, including smartphones and is headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.
The company was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei. Initially focused on manufacturing phone switches, Huawei has expanded its business to include building telecommunications networks, providing operational and consulting services and equipment to enterprises inside and outside of China, and manufacturing communications devices for the consumer market.
Huawei had over 188,000 employees as of September 2018, around 76,000 of them engaged in Research & Development (R&D).
It has 21 R&D institutes around the world, and in April 2019, opened the dedicated Ox Horn Campus in Dongguan. As of 2017, the company invested US$13.8 billion in R&D.
Huawei has deployed its products and services in more than 170 countries, and as of 2011 it served 45 of the 50 largest telecom operators.
Its networks, numbering over 1,500, reach one third of the world's population.
Huawei overtook Ericsson in 2012 as the largest telecommunications-equipment manufacturer in the world, and overtook Apple in 2018 as the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, behind Samsung Electronics.
It ranks 72nd on the Fortune Global 500 list. In December 2018, Huawei reported that its annual revenue had risen to US$108.5 billion in 2018 (a 21% increase over 2017).
Name
According to the company founder Ren Zhengfei, the name Huawei comes from a phrase he saw on a wall, Zhonghua youwei meaning "China has promise" (ไธญๅๆไธบ, Zhลnghuรก yวuwรฉi), when he was starting the company and needed a name.
Zhonghua or Hua means China, while youwei means "promising/to show promise".
In Chinese pinyin, the name is Huรกwรฉi, and pronounced [xwaฬweฬi] in Mandarin Chinese; in Cantonese, the name is transliterated with Jyutping as Waa4-wai4 and pronounced [waฬหwษฬi]. However, pronunciation of Huawei by non-Chinese varies in other countries, for example "Hoe-ah-wei" in the Netherlands.
The company had considered changing the name in English as it was concerned that non-Chinese may find the name hard to pronounce, but decided to keep the name, and launched a name recognition campaign instead to encourage a pronunciation closer to "Wah-Way" using the words "Wow Way".
Early years
Ren Zhengfei founded Huawei in 1987 in Shenzhen. The company reports that it had RMB 21,000 in registered capital at the time of its founding.
Ren sought to reverse engineer foreign technologies with local researchers. At a time when all of China's telecommunications technology was imported from abroad, Ren hoped to build a domestic Chinese telecommunication company that could compete with, and ultimately replace, foreign competitors.
During its first several years the company's business model consisted mainly of reselling private branch exchange (PBX) switches imported from Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, it was reverse-engineering imported switches and investing heavily in research and development to manufacture its own technologies.
By 1990 the company had approximately 600 R&D staff and began its own independent commercialization of PBX switches targeting hotels and small enterprises.
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.
Foreign expansion
In 1997, Huawei won a contract to provide fixed-line network products to Hong Kong company Hutchison Whampoa.
Later that year, Huawei launched its wireless GSM-based products and eventually expanded to offer CDMA and UMTS.
In 1999, the company opened a research and development (R&D) center in Bangalore, India to develop a wide range of telecom software.
In May 2003, Huawei partnered with 3Com on a joint venture known as H3C, which was focused on enterprise networking equipment. It marked 3Com's re-entrance into the high-end core routers and switch market, after having abandoned it in 2000 to focus on other businesses. 3Com bought out Huawei's share of the venture in 2006 for US$882 million.
In 2005, Huawei's foreign contract orders exceeded its domestic sales for the first time. Huawei signed a Global Framework Agreement with Vodafone. This agreement marked the first time a telecommunications equipment supplier from China had received Approved Supplier status from Vodafone Global Supply Chain.
Huawei also signed a contract with British Telecom (BT) for the deployment of its multi-service access network (MSAN) and Transmission equipment for BT's 21st Century Network (21CN).
In 2007, Huawei began a joint venture with U.S. security software vendor Symantec Corporation, known as Huawei Symantec, which aimed to provide end-to-end solutions for network data storage and security. Huawei bought out Symantec's share in the venture in 2012.
In May 2008, Australian carrier Optus announced that it would establish a technology research facility with Huawei in Sydney.
In October 2008, Huawei reached an agreement to contribute to a new GSM-based HSPA+ network being deployed jointly by Canadian carriers Bell Mobility and Telus Mobility, joined by Nokia Siemens Networks.
Huawei delivered one of the world's first LTE/EPC commercial networks for TeliaSonera in Oslo, Norway in 2009.
In July 2010, Huawei was included in the Global Fortune 500 2010 list published by the U.S. magazine Fortune for the first time, on the strength of annual sales of US$21.8 billion and net profit of US$2.67 billion.
In October 2012, it was announced that Huawei would move its UK headquarters to Green Park, Reading, Berkshire.
In September 2017, Huawei created a NarrowBand IOT city-aware network using a "one network, one platform, N applications" construction model utilising IoT, cloud computing, big data, and other next-generation information and communications technology, it also aims to be one of the world's five largest cloud players in the near future.
In April 2019, Huawei established Huawei Malaysia Global Training Centre (MGTC) at Cyberjaya, Malaysia, which is Huawei's first training centre outside of China.
As of the end of 2018, Huawei sold 200 million smartphones. They reported that strong consumer demand for premium range smart phones helped the company reach consumer sales in excess of $52 billion in 2018.
Huawei announced worldwide revenues of $105.1 billion for 2018, with a net profit of $8.7 billion. Huawei's Q1 2019 revenues were up 39% year-over-year, at US$26.76 billion.
Ownership
Ren Zhengfei is the founder and CEO of Huawei and has the power to veto any decisions made by the board of directors.
Huawei maintains it is an employee-owned company. Ren Zhengfei retains approximately 1 percent of the shares of Huawei's holding company, Huawei Investment & Holding, with the remainder of the shares held by a trade union committee (not a trade union per se, and the internal governance procedures of this committee, its members, its leaders or how they are selected all remain unknown) that is claimed to be representative of Huawei's employee shareholders.
The company's trade union committee is registered with and pay dues to the Shenzhen federation of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.
About half of Huawei staff participate in this scheme (foreign employees are not eligible), and hold what the company calls "virtual restricted shares". These shares are nontradable and are allocated to reward performance.
When employees leave Huawei, their shares revert to the company, which compensates them for their holding.
Although employee shareholders receive dividends, their shares do not entitle them to any direct influence in management decisions, but enables them to vote for members of the 115-person Representativesโ Commission from a preselected list of candidates.
The Representativesโ Commission selects Huawei Holding's Board of Directors and Board of Supervisors.
Products and services
Huawei is organized around three core business segments:
1. Telecom Carrier Networks, building telecommunications networks and services
2. Enterprise Business, providing equipment, software and services to enterprise customers, e.g. Government Solutions - see Huawei 4G eLTE
3. Devices, manufacturing electronic communications devices
Huawei announced its Enterprise business in January 2011 to provide network infrastructure, fixed and wireless communication, data center, and cloud computing solutions for global telecommunications customers.
Source:ย wikipedia
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