‘Huawei is optimizing portfolio to boost business resilience’

Eric Xu, Huawei’s Rotating Chairman said Huawei is optimizing its portfolio to boost business resilience to cope with the uncertainty brought by geopolitical tension, the resurgence of COVID-19, and US bans.

Eric Xu made the statement when he delivered a keynote speech at the company’s 18th Global Analyst Summit.

• Nigeria-China N720bn currency swap deal on slow pace 3 years after
• Technologies arm professional farmers in China

More than 400 people, including industry and financial analysts, key opinion leaders, and media representatives joined the 3-day event which ran between April 12 and 14 with the theme “Building a Fully Connected, Intelligent World”.

“Business resilience is our guiding principle. We want to boost the resilience of our entire business, and since last year we have been working to optimize our portfolio with this goal in mind,” said Eric Xu.

Huawei’s 2020 Annual Report shows the company’s sales revenue in 2020 rounded off at CNY891.4 billion, up 3.8% year-on-year, and its net profit reached CNY64.6 billion, up 3.2% year-on-year.

Eric Xu said one of the priorities is to further strengthen Huawei’s software engineering capabilities.

“We’re on the lookout for new business opportunities in the software sector. When we find the right fit, we will step up investment to increase the percentage of software and services in our revenue mix,” said Eric Xu.

In late November 2018, Huawei decided to invest 2 billion US dollars into upgrading its software engineering capabilities.

Eric Xu said the company is “pleased with the results thus far”.

Autonomous driving software is one of the main focuses of the company software investment plan.

According to Eric Xu, autonomous driving software is at the centre of entirely unmanned driving.

“With intense investment in autonomous driving software, our hope is to drive these trends forward as they facilitate the integration of the automotive and ICT industries, which in turn creates long-term strategic opportunities for Huawei.

“Once unmanned driving becomes a reality, we will see disruption in practically all adjacent sectors and trigger the most disruptive industry transformation the world will see in the next 10 years,” said the Rotating Chairman.