Canalys estimates Huawei had 20% of the Q1 $6B China Cloud market. That’s behind Alibaba but ahead of Tencent and Baidu. If growth continues, Huawei’s China Cloud revenues will be $1.5-2.5 billion yearend and likely over $10 billion in 2022.
Huawei is also expanding rapidly in South Africa, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil, and across the global South. A $5 billion/quarter run rate is plausible by the end of 2022. Canalys sees Huawei as particularly strong in government and automotive markets, both growing rapidly.
Distributed OS uses Service Widgets across all devices including those with very little memory #huawei#harmonyOS live tweet Follow @huaweireport for independent reporting This is remarkable
Harmony has features for maintaining App state and reduce performance hits from multiple apps #huawei#harmonyOS live tweet Follow @huaweireport for independent reporting
Google, Amazon, and Apple megabillion dollar battle for controlling our homes now will compete with Huawei OS. Harmony has original features but also needs many more features #huawei#harmonyOS live tweet Follow @huaweireport for independent reporting
Instructions from recipe to smart ovens, shopping apps, refrigerator organizer, nutrition app. Lots to come in health #huawei#harmonyOS live tweet @huaweireport
Bryan and all: For two years Huawei has been saying that Harmony is based on the open source version of Android. So the resemblance is not news. #huawei#harmonyOS live tweet @huaweireportBryan Ma @bryanbma
Hengtong, a fiber and power equipment manufacturer in Suzhou, announced volume production of a 400 Gbps silicon photonic transceiver. (Below.) The company sales in 2020 are US$4 billion, including fiber, power cables, and a marine division it bought from Huawei a year ago.
The 400G QSFP-DD DR4 is a high-performance, state-of-the-art module delivered as a very small quad (4-channel) small form-factor pluggable unit. It is comparable to the best of Cisco and Arista.
China is no longer dependent on the U.S. for any components. It does need Taiwan or Korea to produce the most advanced chips, required for mobile phones. Taiwan in turn is dependent on ASML in the Netherlands for EUV equipment, not the U.S.
“2021 will be another challenging year for us, but it’s also the year that our future development strategy will begin to take shape,” said Eric Xu, Huawei’s Rotating Chairman. Huawei generated CNY152.2 billion in revenue, a 16.5% decrease year-on-year. The Network Business continued to grow. It wasn’t officially announced, but consumer products other than phones probably increased sales. The fitness tracker, earbuds, and watches are winning strong reviews.
Phones have been about half of Huawei sales. I infer the 16.5% overall sales fall resulted from a 30-40% fall in phone sales. Other lines of business will soon replace phones, including cars and cloud.
Huawei will survive and has a clear plan to thrive after a hard year or two. It has $40 billion in the bank and if needed essentially unlimited support from the government. It would be smart for the US to end the war but unlikely. Powerful Democratic Senators Schumer and Warner have joined with Republicans. Bideon is unlikely to take this on until after the November 2022 elections.
Ren has called on the spirit of Shangganling and Huawei’s people are responding.
It looks a lot like Android because it’s based on the Open Source Android code. But it took thousands of engineers and billions of dollars to replace Google’s apps and Google Mobile Services, which Google refused to make Open Source.
Harmony actually runs faster than many parts of Google’s Android. Software engineering has improved since Android was built 15 years ago. In particular, the file system is much faster.
Zhang Qiaoming of Huawei invited Apple to add an interface and join the Hongmeng ecosystem. “If Apple can add interfaces, we do not exclude any manufacturer from embracing the ecology with us.”
Apple is highly unlikely to work with Huawei today. If DC gives up the war on Huawei, Apple may be well advised to join with the Hongmeng ecosystem in three or four years. Huawei’s goal is for Hongmeng to dominate the ICT world. There’s a long way to go; the programmers’ IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is not yet available.
Harmony/Hongmeng is intended to be much more than a replacement for Android. It will be a complete operating system for everything in your home, office, or car. It will be “The Internet of Everything,” controlled by the Huawei Cloud.
The US war on Huawei brought down sales internationally but China’s 700,000 5G cells and explosive cloud growth meant Huawei had an up year. The chip blockade did hurt in Q4 and will continue to hold down sales in 2021. Huawei has sufficient reserves to outlast the United States until China catches up in chip production.
Perhaps the most important figure in the financial report was the $55 billion cash. Another $10 billion will come in from the sale of Honor/Glory. Huawei is only carrying $21 billion in debt, implying it has plenty of borrowing power on commercial terms.
“The supply restrictions for our smartphone business have caused us a great impact,” reflects Hu Houkon. “The growth rate of the consumer business has indeed not met expectations. Huawei’s mobile phone sales have been advancing all the way for so many years. Last year, it was affected by supply problems. Revenue is declining.”
China has agreed to buy $16 billion/year of Iranian oil in what amounts to a barter arrangement for Chinese goods. Telecommunications is specifically included, with a $billion or more for an upgraded mobile system. Huawei & ZTE will probably split the contract.
Iran’s population is 84 million, about the same as Germany or Turkey. That’s as much as Ireland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands, combined. Nothing’s announced but it will be a big deal.
Bolsonaro, under US pressure, had excluded Chinese companies from 5G contracts worth US$3-5 billion. Ernesto Londoño and Letícia Casado report in the New York Times “Brazil has suddenly changed its stance.” Communications Minister Fabio Faria visited Beijing in February “to ask for vaccines.”
Giant Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation found a technicality in London’s High Court in order to keep secret the evidence it provided the US government for the prosecution of Meng Wanzhou. The case has now moved to Hong Kong, where deference to US security interests is not so powerful.
HSBC is at the center of the case, which centers on a briefing by Meng in Hong Kong. It has a moral obligation to release all the evidence in the case.
It also has a practical reason to release the evidence. HSBC is vulnerable to backlash from China.
About 35 per cent of its bank accounts are [in Hong Kong.] In 2019, pre-tax profits from Hong Kong and China totalled $14.9 billion — more than the company’s entire profits of $13.3 billion after losses in other markets, such as the UK, were accounted for.
Jamie Nimmo @JamieNimmo63 Curse of Huawei case deepens HSBC’s Chinese nightmare
China reserves the right not to open this service to investors from countries that block or arbitrarily discriminate against Chinese telecommunications enterprises in law or policy.
Ultimately, the clause apparently was struck, although the final text has not been released.
The deal, agreed on Dec 31, allowed European companies to own 50% of cloud data centers in China. Angela Merkel was the lead proponent for the mega-billion trade deal, backed by Emmanuel Macron. Trump and Pompeo strongly opposed the deal.
China buys $200 billion from Europe every year. EU investment in China is $120 billion. Mercedes sells twice as many cars in China than in Germany.
In the long run, that gives China enormous bargaining power.
Under pressure, Huawei has invested $tens of billions in security. It only makes sense that it is tking the lead in conventional security testing. 3GPP, the industry’s standards body, confirms Huawei is the first to pass GPP’s Security Assurance Specifications (SCAS) testing in both LTE and 5G.
While an important symbol, it’s very hard to extrapolate from testing to truly effective security, No one is certain what threats will arise in the 5G era, It’s highly likely many new issues will be discovered for which there is no test plan, 5G will involve many more components, many of them cheap IoT devices. Many experts are fearfulof the enlarged “Attack Surface.”
Nor does testing like this tell us much about the real issue, penetration by a nation-state. The Russians have recently cracked slews of US government systems. The hacking group Cozy Bear penetrated, among others, the US Department of (Nuclear) Energy. Separately, Microsoft was deeply breached.
The real evidence on security is deeply classified and often distorted for political purposes. Neither I nor anyone not a part of the security apparatus can provide real answers.
