(From Shenzhen, China) In 2018 Huawei was about to conquer the world. It became the second brand of smartphones best-selling in the world, ahead of Apple and behind Samsung. And all the forecasts indicated that he would reach the top.
It couldn’t be: as part of the trade war between the United States and China, Donald Trump’s government accused her that her equipment served to provide classified information to Beijing and, in 2019, directly prohibited companies from her country from having any dealings with herwhich is why their phones stopped having Intel chips, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows, for example.
In practice, their cell phones became almost useless outside of China.
It wasn’t all. Meng Wanzhou, CEO of Huawei and daughter of the company’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, was arrested in Canada at the request of American justice, accused of fraud, conspiracy and usurpation for allegedly lying to HSBC bank about Huawei’s true relationship with a company called Skycom, putting the bank at risk of violating US sanctions against Iran. The arrest caused a spike in tension in relations between China and Canada. The woman was only released in 2021, after reaching an agreement to suspend the judicial process.
But in addition, the United States applied all possible pressure on its allies so that did not acquire 5G network equipment from Huawei, the leader in that marketwhich resulted in the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, among others, turning to the Chinese company’s main competitors: Ericsson, from Sweden, and Nokia, from Finland.
A series of blows enough to bring down any company, no matter how large. This was not the case of Huawei, which since then has dedicated part of its efforts and money to demonstrating that its back They are wide enough to continue competing for being a major – and leading – player among the most important companies on the planet.
It was verified again in mid-May, in the Huawei Cloud Compass 2024an event organized for more than 200 clients from Latin America to exhibit – and sell – the virtues of their cloud within the special framework provided by the impressiveness of their headquarters in China.
Guests learned first-hand about service experiences, innovative business models and improvements in operational efficiency achieved, according to exhibitors, by Huawei cloud technology.
In his opening speech, Daniel Zhou, president of Huawei Latin America, insisted on the company’s commitment to supporting Latin American companies in their digital transformation processes. He maintained that “Huawei Cloud is the fastest growing cloud platform in Latin Americawhich allowed it to occupy third place in the market, with a rapidly growing customer base of 7,000.”
Zhou added that “digital transformation in Latin America is accelerating, and the development of technologies such as 5G and the Cloud is at a crucial stage.”
Later, at a table with journalists, he indicated that “connectivity is the first step in the digital transformation and updating of the industry. In markets like China, thanks to the rapid development of 5G infrastructure, thousands of industrial innovations are being implemented and generating tangible value, such as unmanned logistics vehicles, massification of telemedicine and smart education.
For the executive, it is important that government agencies play a role that promotes scientific innovationtechnology and the development of the digital economy, hand in hand with a long-term digital strategy.
Zhou also talked about Pangu, his artificial intelligence language model. In his opinion, it can be adapted to any type of company: “We have an evolved cloud, on which our AI runs, which combines safety and sustainability because the value of information storage does not lie in technology but in the success stories of this changing world.”
He also said that Huawei is committed to building infrastructure in Latin America and revealed that in the first quarter of the year The company’s operating income was around US$24.7 billionan increase of 36.7% year-on-year, and its net profit was US$2.72 billion, an increase of 564% year-on-year.
According to what was reported, Huawei Cloud became the cloud service provider with the largest number of nodes in the region. Each year, it launches more than 40 new services and serves more than 5,300 customers, including more than 60 financial institutions, more than 200 media companies, more than 100 retailers, and more than 200 SAP cloud customers.
In Argentina, Cloud focuses on media, fintech, logistics, E-commerce industries, among others. Juan Bonora, VP of Huawei Argentina stated: “We have the fastest network in the region with a latency of less than 50 milliseconds. This allows our customers to access our cloud services in an agile, fast and scalable way.”
Among the exhibitors was Alejandro Morales, CEO of Gestión Compartida, a Grupo Clarín company.
In addition to the presentations, the summit featured thematic round tables by sector and the China-LATAM Business Connect forum.
As part of the event, around thirty journalists from different media outlets in the region were also invited, including Clarion.
The Huawei campus in Dongguan, designed to impress
The opening of the conference was held at the company’s Dongguan headquarters, the Ox-Horn campus, which was evidently designed to impress its visitors. There, where the Huawei Research and Development center is located (which claims to invest 23% of its income in this), there are 12 sectors or cities with architecture inspired by 12 European cities linked to large universitiessuch as Paris, Verona, Oxford, Luxembourg, Bruges or Bologna.
In total there are 108 buildings that cost close to 1.5 billion dollars where between 25,000 and 30,000 people work. Its construction, which began in 2015, took seven years. Includes 7.8 kilometers of tracks toured by a system of electric trains that transport employees and visitors to the complex.
The company library is also located there, a huge building that houses 110,000 volumes in more than 20 languages and dozens of ancient books that are difficult to value.
Artificial intelligence, 5.5G and the cloud, Huawei’s bets
The guests had the opportunity to tour the company’s other large headquarters, the headquarters in Shenzhen, where some 40,000 employees work.
There they attended demonstrations of autonomous vehicles for delivery and the power of the next standard in networks: 5.5G, which reaches enormous download speeds of 10 Gigabytes per second.
They also walked through enormous halls that exhibit the latest electronic gadgets (3D screens without glasses and “cloths” for digital painting, for example) and how Huawei technology is applied industrially (although taking photos was not allowed, something contradictory to the fact of taking the tour with journalists).
It was possible to see the use that Futian, a district of Shenzhen, makes of AI and the company’s cloud, which ranges from optimizing traffic to streamlining procedures.
Also the impact that these technologies have in sectors as diverse as education, health, mining or finance. And the crucial role it can play in industries linked to transportation, whether in trains, ports or airports.
Just as an example, the port of Tianjin, one of the ten largest in the world, uses Huawei technology to improve its performance. They pass by 20 million containers per year that need to be loaded onto or off ships as quickly as possible: delays in this industry are measured in tens of thousands of dollars.
It is a real Tetris that is very complicated to put together. But the use of artificial intelligence made it possible to reduce the planning time from 24 hours to 10 minutes, thanks, among other things, to the 100 autonomous vehicles that carry the containers from one place to another. That is to say, a lot of money: a real smartport.