Huawei, a Chinese multinational telecommunications company, ranks today as the world's number two smartphone maker, just behind Samsung, which means it has officially surpassed Apple. So, how was Huawei founded and by whom? How did he manage to surpass Apple without anyone noticing?
Ren Zhengfei founded Huawei during the worst days of his life. He was expelled from the People's Liberation Army, where he worked as an engineer, after being defrauded by a customer and forfeited 2 million Chinese Yuan. On the other hand, he was 41 years old and was trying to get over the trauma of being divorced. Nothing in her life was going well. Ren was having a hard time when he found the strength to team up with a few of his colleagues to form a company they would call Huawei.
Huawei was not in the business of manufacturing telecommunication devices at that time. In the early days of the company's founding, the sole purpose was to make money from anything that could be thrown in and sold, if necessary, even to the diet pill industry.
With the help of his curiosity, wit, and plenty of luck, Ren has led his company to enter the Chinese telecommunications market, which lacks customer-centric initiatives and is also developing at an extraordinarily fast pace.
During an interview, Ren explained his situation with these words: “Life has always been tough for me. I have never been able to sail on a still sea, because all my youth was spent in a family that could be described as bad in terms of infrastructure. So I can't say that I have a very bright past. It took an incredible amount of effort for even the smallest business opportunity.”
The time period when Ren worked for the Chinese army attracted everyone's attention. He joined the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in 1974, when the Chinese Cultural Revolution broke out and there were serious problems in finding food and clothes, and served as an engineer. Ren describes this period in a statement to reporters: “At that time, chaos reigned almost everywhere. Textile resources were so scarce that most people could not find clothes and could not even get the opportunity to patch and repair their existing clothes.” Chinese citizens didn't even have proper clothes to wear. Ren, on the other hand, was tasked with "establishing a chemical factory to produce textile fibers in northeast China."
Ren and his fellow soldiers were sleeping in makeshift barracks in sub-zero temperatures. They survived by eating pickled vegetables for months.
It was his family background that completely extinguished Ren's hope of taking up the post of lieutenant colonel in the army. Because his father was seen as someone trying to restore capitalism and overthrow socialism. During his military service, he could spend only one month of the year with his family. After founding Huawei, he had to fight for the survival of the company, spending 16 hours in the office.
Despite spending limited time with their father, two of his children chose to work with him at Huawei company.
His eldest daughter, Meng Wanzhou, worked for the company for years, even becoming its main financial officer. However, this high-profile position has made her daughter the focal point of the US government's crackdown on Huawei. Meng was detained in Canada for a time. Ren says he doesn't have an intimate relationship with his daughter, Meng, because his time in the army got in the way.
R & D
Instead of expanding its R&D department within the country, Huawei has chosen to establish R&D laboratories around the world. Between 2002 and 2010, the company managed to open 57 innovation centers and subsidiaries in the USA, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Canada and the UK in their fields of expertise.
For example, since the Swedish city of Stockholm is considered the starting point for European 3G technologies, Huawei chose to open an institute there.
To develop and support radio frequency identification capabilities, he opened a new innovation-focused institute in Moscow, Russia, which is a leader in this particular field.
At the end of August 2015, Huawei had 255 information technology laboratories that established laboratories, research institutes and development centers to follow the developments in the field of cloud computing. Thus, it expanded its R&D department considerably, employing a total of 30,000 personnel. Of the company's 180,000 employees, 80,000 worked in the R&D department, which equated to about 45% of the workforce. It is no surprise that Huawei managed to become the world's 6th largest R&D investor in 2017. Huawei holds 35,773 patents and the company is recognized as one of the leading global patent filing firms in 2008. In 2015, the number of international patent applications submitted by Huawei reached a record level of 2,180,000.
And the year is 2019
Huawei: Success story or Trojan horse?
With 180,000 employees globally and more than $100 billion in revenue in 2018, Huawei is not an element of the US-China trade war today, but rather the center of an undeclared war between the Anglo-Saxon world and China.
The US sanctions and legal operation process targeting Huawei was covered in the international press in 2018. However, it goes back to 2012 when the Chinese brand was tracked on suspicion of espionage.
To summarize chronologically, the first move came in 2018 with the ban on the use of Huawei brand mobile phones by members of the US military. This was followed by US President Trump's proposal to ban the sale of American-made technological equipment to Huawei and ZTE companies. Australia in August 2018 and New Zealand in November banned the use of Huawei's 5th generation mobile telecommunications infrastructure in their countries. In December, Huawei's senior executive Meng Wanzhou, daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, was detained in Canada on charges of violating embargoes against Iran.