Huawei Technologies and Its Strategic Dilemmas and Challenges

Huawei Technologies Case Study
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Huawei Technologies Case Study
Company Overview
Huawei Technologies, founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, is a Chinese multinational company that started as a telecommunication operator and has grown to become one of the largest global providers of Information and Telecommunication (ICT) infrastructure and mobile devices (Huawei, n.d.-a). The history of Huawei Technologies has however not been very smooth as it is marred with a lot of controversies particularly with the notion that the tech giant has ties with the communist Chinese government. The speculation about the links of Huawei company with the Chinese government is primarily based on the relationship the founder, Zhengfei, had with the Chinese government in the past, working as a People’s Liberation Army personnel (Garsd, 2018). However, Huawei Technologies declared that the company is privately owned, with most of its shares owned by the employees, and no government entities have a stake in the company (Huawei, n.d.-a). The firm has grown tremendously over the past few decades, becoming the first Chinese company in the telecommunication industry to rank favorably among the most famous telecoms companies in the world. The company is currently under the leadership of Liang Hua who serves as the Chairman of the Board, with a bunch of rotating deputies serving as the top executives of the company. According to the annual report for the year 2020, Huawei collected revenue totaling CNY 891 Billion ($136.7 billion), recording a net profit of 3.6 percent compared with the previous year (Huawei, n.d.-b). The core business segments of the company include the consumers, enterprises, and carrier businesses, contributing revenue of 54.2 %, 11.3 %, and 34.0 % respectively (Huawei, n.d.-b). China remains the largest consumer of Huawei products and services, contributing 65.6% in revenue for the year 2020 followed by the EMEA and the Asia Pacific regions with 12.2% and 8.7% respectively (Huawei, n.d.-b).
Research and Innovation in Huawei Technologies
Huawei as a key player in the telecommunication industry is characterized by rapid development in invention and innovation. The company has invested much of its resources in research and innovation to remain competitive and deliver cutting edge technologies in its core business areas. The breakthroughs in the research sector that the company has managed in the past few years are mainly on the wireless networks, carrier and enterprise networks, and video codec. Huawei continues its research on wireless networks by collaborating with academic researchers and institutions to expand its innovativeness and introduction of new technologies on wireless networks including air interface technologies, new network architectures, and expansion of low-band and high-band networks (Huawei, n.d.-c). On the carrier and enterprise network segments, the company is focusing its effort on the development of network protocols towards achieving fully equipped internet of things technologies. Huawei is also partnering with different vendors to develop new video codec standards and also the CUVA HDR standards (Huawei, n.d.-c). Invention and innovativeness have been the major focus fo...