Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (/'hw???we?/; Chinese: ??

; pinyin: About this

soundHu�w�i) is a Chinese multinational technology company. It provides
telecommunications equipment and sells consumer electronics, smartphones[4] and is
headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong.

The company was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei. Initially focused on manufacturing
phone switches, Huawei has expanded its business to include building
telecommunications networks, providing operational and consulting services and
equipment to enterprises inside and outside of China, and manufacturing
communications devices for the consumer market.[5][6] Huawei had over 188,000
employees as of September 2018.[7][8]

Huawei has deployed its products and services in more than 170 countries.[9] Huawei
overtook Ericsson in 2012 as the largest telecommunications-equipment manufacturer
in the world,[10] and overtook Apple in 2018 as the second-largest manufacturer of
smartphones in the world, behind Samsung Electronics.[11] In December 2019, Huawei
reported that its annual revenue had risen to US$121.72 billion in 2019.[12]

Although successful internationally, Huawei has faced difficulties in some markets,

due to claims of undue state support and cybersecurity concerns�primarily from the
United States government�that Huawei's infrastructure equipment may enable
surveillance by the Chinese government.[13] With the development of 5G wireless
networks, there have been calls from the U.S. to prevent the use of products by
Huawei or fellow Chinese telecom ZTE by the U.S. or its allies. Huawei has argued
that its products posed "no greater cybersecurity risk" than those of any other
vendor and that there is no evidence of the U.S. espionage claims.[14] Nonetheless,
Huawei pulled out of the U.S. consumer market in 2018, after these concerns
affected the ability to market their consumer products there. Questions regarding
Huawei's ownership and control as well as concerns regarding the extent of state
support also remain.[13]

In the midst of an ongoing trade war between China and the United States, Huawei
was restricted from doing commerce with U.S. companies due to alleged previous
willful violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran. On 29 June 2019, U.S. President
Donald Trump reached an agreement to resume trade talks with China and announced
that he would ease the aforementioned sanctions on Huawei. Huawei cut 600 jobs at
its Santa Clara research center in June, and in December 2019 founder Ren Zhengfei
said it was moving the center to Canada because the restrictions would block them
from interacting with US employees.[1According to the company founder Ren Zhengfei,
the name Huawei comes from a slogan he saw on a wall, Zhonghua youwei meaning
"China has promise" (????, Zhonghu� youw�i), when he was starting the company and
needed a name.[17] Zhonghua or Hua means China,[18] while youwei means
"promising/to show promise".[19][20] In Chinese pinyin, the name is Hu�w�i,[21] and
pronounced [xwa?we�i] in Mandarin Chinese; in Cantonese, the name is transliterated
with Jyutping as Waa4-wai4 and pronounced [wa??w??i]. However, pronunciation of
Huawei by non-Chinese varies in other countries, for example "Hoe-ah-wei" in the
Netherlands.[22] The company had considered changing the name in English as it was
concerned that non-Chinese may find the name hard to pronounce,[23] but decided to
keep the name, and launched a name recognition campaign instead to encourage a
pronunciation closer to "Wah-Way" using the words "Wow Way".[24][25]

History
Early years
During the 1980s, the Chinese government tried to modernize the country's
underdeveloped telecommunications infrastructure. A core component of the
telecommunications network was telephone exchange switches, and in the late 1980s,
several Chinese research groups endeavored to acquire and develop the technology,
usually through joint ventures with foreign companies.
Ren Zhengfei, a former deputy director of the People's Liberation Army engineering
corps, founded Huawei in 1987 in Shenzhen. The company reports that it had RMB
21,000 in registered capital at the time of its founding.

Ren sought to reverse engineer foreign technologies with local researchers. At a

time when all of China's telecommunications technology was imported from abroad,
Ren hoped to build a domestic Chinese telecommunication company that could compete
with, and ultimately replace, foreign competitors.[26]

During its first several years the company's business model consisted mainly of
reselling private branch exchange (PBX) switches imported from Hong Kong.[5][27]
Meanwhile, it was reverse-engineering imported switches and investing heavily in
research and development to manufacture its own technologies.[5] By 1990 the
company had approximately 600 R&D staff and began its own independent
commercialization of PBX switches targeting hotels and small enterprises.[28]

The company's first major breakthrough came in 1993 when it launched its C&C08
program controlled telephone switch. It was by far the most powerful switch
available in China at the time. By initially deploying in small cities and rural
areas and placing emphasis on service and customizability, the company gained
market share and made its way into the mainstream market.[29]

Huawei also won a key contract to build the first national telecommunications
network for the People's Liberation Army, a deal one employee described as "small
in terms of our overall business, but large in terms of our relationships".[30] In
1994, founder Ren Zhengfei had a meeting with Party general secretary Jiang Zemin,
telling him that "switching equipment technology was related to national security,
and that a nation that did not have its own switching equipment was like one that
lacked its own military." Jiang reportedly agreed with this assessment.[5]

In the 1990s Canadian telecom giant Nortel outsourced production of their entire
product line to Huawei.[31] They subsequently outsourced much of their product
engineering to Huawei as well.[32]

Another major turning point for the company came in 1996 when the government in
Beijing adopted an explicit policy of supporting domestic telecommunications
manufacturers and restricting access to foreign competitors. Huawei was promoted by
both the government and the military as a national champion, and established new
research and development offices.[5]

Foreign expansion
Huawei Offices

In Voorburg, Netherlands

In Markham, Ontario, Canada

In 1997, Huawei won a contract to provide fixed-line network products to Hong Kong
company Hutchison Whampoa.[29] Later that year, Huawei launched its wireless GSM-
based products and eventually expanded to offer CDMA and UMTS. In 1999, the company
opened a research and development (R&D) center in Bangalore, India to develop a
wide range of telecom software.[28]

In May 2003, Huawei partnered with 3Com on a joint venture known as H3C, which was
focused on enterprise networking equipment. It marked 3Com's re-entrance into the
high-end core routers and switch market, after having abandoned it in 2000 to focus
on other businesses. 3Com bought out Huawei's share of the venture in 2006 for
US$882 million.[33][34]

In 2005, Huawei's foreign contract orders exceeded its domestic sales for the first
time. Huawei signed a Global Framework Agreement with Vodafone. This agreement
marked the first time a telecommunications equipment supplier from China had
received Approved Supplier status from Vodafone Global Supply Chain.[35][non-
primary source needed] Huawei also signed a contract with British Telecom (BT) for
the deployment of its multi-service access network (MSAN) and Transmission
equipment for BT's 21st Century Network (21CN).[citation needed]

In 2007, Huawei began a joint venture with U.S. security software vendor Symantec
Corporation, known as Huawei Symantec, which aimed to provide end-to-end solutions
for network data storage and security. Huawei bought out Symantec's share in the
venture in 2012, with The New York Times noting that Symantec had fears that the
partnership "would prevent it from obtaining United States government classified
information about cyberthreats".[36]

In May 2008, Australian carrier Optus announced that it would establish a

technology research facility with Huawei in Sydney.[37] In October 2008, Huawei
reached an agreement to contribute to a new GSM-based HSPA+ network being deployed
jointly by Canadian carriers Bell Mobility and Telus Mobility, joined by Nokia
Siemens Networks.[38] Huawei delivered one of the world's first LTE/EPC commercial
networks for TeliaSonera in Oslo, Norway in 2009.[28]

In July 2010, Huawei was included in the Global Fortune 500 2010 list published by
the U.S. magazine Fortune for the first time, on the strength of annual sales of
US$21.8 billion and net profit of US$2.67 billion.[39][40]

In October 2012, it was announced that Huawei would move its UK headquarters to
Green Park, Reading, Berkshire.[41]

In September 2017, Huawei created a NarrowBand IOT city-aware network using a "one
network, one platform, N applications" construction model utilising IoT, cloud
computing, big data, and other next-generation information and communications
technology, it also aims to be one of the world's five largest cloud players in the
near future.[42][43]

In April 2019, Huawei established Huawei Malaysia Global Training Centre (MGTC) at
Cyberjaya, Malaysia,[44] which is Huawei's fi