Huawei

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.
华为技术有限公司

Type	Privately-held company
Founded	1988
Founder(s)	Ren Zhengfei
Headquarters	Shenzhen, People's Republic of China
Industry	Telecommunication
Revenue	▲ $23.3 billion USD (2008)
Net income	▲ $1.15 billion USD (2008)
Employees	87,502(2008)
Website	www.huawei.com

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (Chinese: 华为技术有限公司; pinyin: Huáwei Jíshu Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī) is the largest networking and telecommunications equipment supplier in the People's Republic of China. It is headquartered in Longgang District, Shenzhen, Guangdong.^[1]

Established in 1988 by Ren Zhengfei, Huawei Technologies is a private high-tech enterprise which specializes in research and development (R&D), production and marketing of communications equipments, and providing customized network solutions for telecom carriers.^[2] Huawei serves 35 of the top 50 telecoms operators and puts 10 per cent of revenue into R&D each year.^[3] In addition to the R&D centers in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Xi'an, Chengdu, and Wuhan in China, Huawei also has R&D centers in Stockholm, Sweden; Dallas and Silicon Valley, U.S.; Bangalore, India; Ferbane in Offaly, Ireland; Moscow, Russia; Jakarta, Indonesia and Netherlands.

Name

(Chinese: 华为; pinyin: Huáwei) officially translates in English to Huawei. The character 华 means the country of China, also can be used as adjective to mean splendid, magnificent. The character 为 means action or achievement. Huáwei itself variously translates as "achievement", "magnificent act" or "splendid act". Such a translation is an etymological curiosity, not to be used generally.^{[citation needed]}

History

Huawei was founded by Ren Zhengfei in 1988,^[4] as a distributor of imported PBX products, with an initial registered capital of 24000 RMB. By 1989, Huawei started developing and later marketing its own PBX. After accumulating knowledge and resources on PBX business, Huawei achieved its first breakthrough into mainstream telecommunication market in 1993, by launching C&C08 digital telephone switch, which had a switching capacity of over 10K circuits. Until that time, Chinese domestic telecom companies were not able to build switches with such capacity. Huawei's switches were first deployed only in small cities and rural areas. It eventually gained market share and made its way into major city switch offices and toll service. Other Huawei products also likely have such a history for their adoption, against the competition of then dominating foreign telecom equipment manufacturers. The culture of the company is authoritarian, in line with its counterparts in China, Korea, and Japan.

In 1994, Huawei established long distance transmission equipment business, launched its own HONET integrated access network and SDH product line. In 1996, Huawei captured its first overseas contract, providing fixed-line network products to Hongkong's Hutchison-Whampoa. Later, in 1997, Huawei released its GSM product and eventually expanded to offer CDMA and UMTS.

From 1998 to 2003, Huawei contracted with IBM for management consulting, and underwent significant transformation of its management and product development structure. After 2001, Huawei increased its speed of expanding into overseas market. By 2004, its overseas sales had surpassed that of the domestic market. Huawei has a joint venture with Siemens for developing TD-SCDMA products. In 2003, Huawei entered into a joint venture named Huawei-3Com with 3Com for Internet Protocol-based routers and switches, eventually selling its 49% stake to 3Com in 2007 for $US 882 million.^[5]

Huawei and American security firm Symantec announced in May 2007 the forming of a joint-venture company that will develop security and storage appliances to market to telecommunications carriers. Huawei will own 51% of the new company, to be named Huawei Symantec Inc. Symantec will own the rest. The joint-venture will be based in Chengdu.^[6]

In May 2008, Huawei joined Optus in developing a mobile innovation centre in Sydney, Australia, aimed at accelerating the adoption of high-speed mobile and wireless broadband.^[7]

In March 2009, the Wimax Forum announced four new members to its Board of Directors including Thomas Lee, the Vice Director of the Industry Standards Department at Huawei^[8].

Timeline

• 1988 - Ren Zhengfei founds Huawei as distributor of imported Private branch exchange PBX products
• 1993 - Introduces its first major product, a digital telephone switch with large capacity of over 10,000 circuits
• 1996 - Wins first big overseas contract for fixed-line network products from Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa
• 2003 - Forms joint venture with 3Com to build Internet protocol-based routers and switches
• 2004 - Overseas sales surpass domestic sales for first time
• 2009 - Named world's top patent seeker, becoming the first Chinese company to head the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) list.
• 2009 - 2008 contract orders rose 46 percent to $23.3 billion (75 percent of which came from overseas) and expects orders to reach $30 billion this year.
• 2009 - Overtakes Alcatel-Lucent to become world's No. 3 mobile network gear maker, doubling its market share from a year ago, according to researcher Dell'Oro

Products and product deployment

Huawei E220 HSDPA USB modem

Huawei provides fixed network, mobile network, data communications, optical network, software & services and terminals, including modems --- ranging from switching, integrated access network, NGN, xDSL, optical transport, intelligent network, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, W-CDMA, CDMA2000, a full series of routers and other LAN equipment. Huawei manufactures also mobile phones ^[9] such as the Vodafone 710 and 716), 3G HSDPA cards (Huawei E620^[10] HSDPA Card is being offered by e.g., Vodafone in the United Kingdom and Telia in Sweden), 3G HSDPA USB modem, Huawei E220.^[11] and 3G HSUPA modem stick Huawei E172^[12].

In 2005, Huawei was selected by BT as a preferred supplier of communications equipment for BT’s 21CN network strategy. ^[13] In the same year, Huawei signed a Global Framework Agreement with Vodafone for mobile network infrastructure. ^[14] In 2006, Motorola signed a deal^[15] with Huawei where Motorola distributes and installs Huawei's 3G equipment. On November 15 (2006), Huawei signed a deal^[16] worth 30 million euros (38.4 million USD) with German operator Versatel Holding Deutschland GmbH. Huawei will build a fibre-optic communication network based on Internet protocol (IP) for Versatel, Germany's third largest fixed-line operator. On February 1 (2007), Forbes reported that France Telecom has selected Huawei to supply UMTS mobile equipment for its third generation network.^[17] Huawei replaced Alcatel/Motorola in Romania, and Nortel in Belgium.

Vodafone awarded Huawei 2007 Global Supplier Award for Outstanding Performance in June, 2007.^[18]

On October 29, 2007, Huawei announced a WiMAX Solution ^[19]

Huawei E960 HSDPA supports two working modes of the wireless gateway and USB modem . It includes four LAN interfaces for the RJ-45, WLAN, telephone interface for the RJ-11, USB interface. The power is supplied through the USB from the PC or power adaptor^[20].

Huawei pushes (broadband) Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC). Leading the company's FMC initiatives is the new Huawei HG553 VoIP home gateway, currently available through Vodafone. The device combines a standard ADSL2 + Wi-Fi-enabled four port router with a pair of phone sockets for VoIP calling and a dockable USB mobile broadband dongle, giving the user a backup option of 3G data should the fixed-line service fail. Being removable means that the owner can take the mobile broadband service with them when necessary^[21].

The Huawei U121, Playset and the Vodafone 716 are 3G mobile camera phones designed and manufactured by Chinese telecommunications equipment supplier Huawei. The phone is most common in its Vodafone UK form, where it is branded as a Vodafone product, and sold as a budget pay as you talk phone. It's also sold by Polish Play network as Playset.

Competitive position

Huawei's global contract sales for 2006 reached 11 billion USD (a 34% increase from 2005), 65% of which comes from overseas market. Huawei has now become a leading vendor in the industry and one of the few vendors in the world to provide end-to-end 3G solutions. In Feb 2009 CTS (Gibraltar) Ltd is due to launch a 3G Mobile network. This network is an end-to-end 3G solution provided by Huawei.^{[citation needed]} In 2006, Huawei ranked No.1 in the global NGN market (Infonetics), No.1 in Mobile Softswitch (In-Stat), No. 2 in Optical Network (Ovum-RHK), No.1 in IP DSLAM (Infonetics), No.2 in broadband convergence routers (Gartner), and No.1 in MSAN market (Infonetics).^[22]. By the end of 2008, global contract sales of Huawei Technologies, China's largest telecoms gear maker, jumped 46 percent to 23.3 billion USD. ^[23]. Huawei also forecast sales of more than 30 billion USD in 2009. ^[23].

In 2007, Huawei became the 4th largest patent applicant in the world after Matsushita, Philips Electronics and Siemens with 1,365 applications.^[24] It also recorded sales(not contract sales) of 12,56 billion USD (an increase of 49% from 2006) for the year, which makes it the fifth largest telecommunication company in the world in terms of revenue after Cisco, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia Siemens Networks. ^[25]

Huawei Technologies was included in the World's Most Respected 200 Companies list compiled by Forbes magazine in May 2007,^[26] one of the six from telecom industry.

In December 2008, BusinessWeek magazine puts Huawei at number 3 after Apple and Google in their first annual list of 'The World's Most Influential Companies' in collaboration with an advisory board of 14 academics, consultants, and industry leaders worldwide, including Shelly Lazarus, Chairman and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide and Jim Collins, author of Good to Great ^[27]. ^[28]

In the end of 2008, Huawei has successfully shipped over one billion licenses for its All-IP based mobile softswitch. This significant milestone was reached only five years after Huawei shipped the industry's first mobile softswitch and it is the first time any manufacturer has reached this level. Huawei softswitches are speeding the transformation of mobile networks to All-IP in more than 100 countries. Huawei launched its IP-based mobile softswitch solution in 2003 and, in the same year, installed the world's first 3G mobile softswitch with separate architecture in the United Arab Emirates. In 2004, the company created the world's largest IP mobile softswitch network in China. ^{[29] [30]}.

In January 2009, a United Nations agency reported Huawei was the world's top international patent seeker in 2008, which ended the almost one decade of domination by Netherlands' Philips Electronics as the first place on the list of applicants for World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) patent protection. ^[31]

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on 27 January 2009, Huawei was ranked as the largest applicant under WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), with 1,737 applications published in 2008. Overall, the total number of international patent filings under WIPO's PCT for 2008 represents the highest number of applications received under the PCT in a single year and China improved its ranking by one place, to become the sixth largest user of the PCT, with 6,089 filings.^[32]

Dispute with CAT, a Thai Operator^{[citation needed]}

Huawei has provided CDMA2000 1xEV-DO (EVDO) equipment and installation for CAT Telecom in 51 regional provinces of 76 total provinces (where 25 central provinces provided by Hutch on Motorola equipment) in Thailand since 2005. The project was won in an auction by Huawei at THB 7.199 billion with former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra as an observer. The first phase of the project has undergone some obstacle during the acceptance procedure but completed nevertheless. However, there has been a contract dispute during the Phase II preventing CAT to remit remaining payment thus forced Huawei to sue CAT for the payment it owes.

The main dispute relates to the provision of CDMA2000 1xEV-DV as clearly specified in the contract. However, the EVDV is currently not developed by the chip maker, Qualcomm, making the clause impossible to fulfill. While Huawei sued CAT for the remaining payment of the project plus interest, but CAT came up with quite a number of loopholes of the contracts in retaliation and sued Huawei for a whopping THB 30 billion, 4 times the value of the whole project.

The case has long been awaited by both parties, worsening relationship between the two, and would potentially affect Thai-Chinese relationship if the ruling leans towards CAT's interest. After years of negotiation, CAT and Huawei seemed to want to settle the case without the court ruling. However, after 5 sets of Board of Directors, no one in CAT nor the Thai Government was courageous enough to settle it rendering CAT CDMA mobile service to perform massive loss since the project started.

See also

• Huawei Symantec - Joint Venture between Huawei and Symantec
• Femtocell
• High Speed Packet Access and HSPA+

References

External links

• Huawei Technologies official website
• Latest Huawei News from VisitCHN
• T-Mobile 'USB Stick 110' works with Linux.