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Eric Xu
Rotating Chairman, Huawei

2019 Huawei Annual Report Press Conference

🎥 Mar 31, 2020 📺 Huawei ⏱ 94m 👁 7357 views
Stay tuned for all the key financial facts and figures from the #Huawei 2019 Annual Report with our livestream from the Shenzhen HQ on March 31 @ 16:00 - 18:00 (GMT+8).
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About Eric Xu

Eric Xu, Rotating Chairman of Huawei, stated at the company’s 2022 Annual Report Press Conference in March 2023 that the year ahead would be “crucial to Huawei's sustainable survival and development,” citing a “challenging external environment” and “non-market factors” that continue to affect operations. He said Huawei would focus on unlocking new growth opportunities, enhancing business resilience, and ensuring product competitiveness. Xu also estimated that Huawei’s addressable markets would exceed one trillion US dollars by 2027. In earlier appearances, Xu commented on the impact of U.S. sanctions on the semiconductor industry, stating that China’s semiconductor industry would “take efforts to self-save” and that he believed it would “realize a very strong and self-reliant industry.” He also discussed Huawei’s investment in research and development, noting that the company invests more than 10% of revenue annually, and highlighted the role of ICT technology in reducing industrial emissions. At the 2021 Global Analyst Summit, Xu said that “unwarranted U.S. sanctions” could trigger a new global economic crisis<|begin▁of▁file|>.

Source: AI-verified profile updated from Eric Xu's recent appearances. Browse all interviews →

Transcript (43 segments)
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Joe Kelly0:00
Good afternoon in Asia, good morning in Europe and the Middle East, and good evening to any insomniacs in the Americas listening live to this conference. My name is Joe Kelly, I'll be the moderator today for the event. Welcome to the launch of Huawei's annual report for the year 2019. 2019 was a dramatic year for Huawei, the drama continues. The world is contending with COVID-19 and for that reason our event today is virtual online. This is the first time we've done this event by videoconference exclusively. Thankfully, at a time when everybody is self-isolating and distancing, we can all depend on information and communications technology and broadband networks to bring ourselves back together again. Today's event is a media event, it's also being broadcast simultaneously over the internet. We're talking today in nine languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. A truly global language lineup for a global event. Today's agenda is pretty simple: we will talk for 30 minutes describing the key points from our annual report and then we'll turn the conference over to the media for their question and answers. So we'll be here for about 90 minutes. Today we have two speakers, both of whom are going to speak in Mandarin with translation. We have Madame Meng Wanzhou, who's the Deputy CFO of the company, she will join for the Q&A. But first I'd like to introduce Eric Xu, Huawei's Rotating Chairman, to talk us through the key points from the events of 2019. For Huawei, please join me in welcoming Eric Xu to the stage.
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Eric Xu2:06
Ladies and gentlemen, media friends, good morning, good afternoon. Welcome to the launch of Huawei's annual report for 2019. 2019 was a very challenging year for Huawei. With the trust and support of customers and partners, Huawei maintained robust business and generally achieved expected business results. It also laid a foundation for what I'm going to say today. At the very least, they deserve to be launching an extremely difficult annual report. The coronavirus outbreak is undoubtedly capturing everyone's attention. We certainly hope it will pass quickly so that everything goes back to normal. Given the outbreak being controlled in China and developing outside of China, Huawei has attached great importance to the immediate and full implementation of prevention and control, ensuring the health and safety of our employees. We also work to respond and satisfy the needs of our customers and governments in the fight against the epidemic. As of today, Huawei's production in China has generally been restored. At the same time, we worked together with operators to ensure secure and stable network operations and help fight the pandemic with digital innovation and applications. In 2019, Huawei focused on ICT infrastructure and smart devices and achieved sales revenue of over 858.2 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 19.1% and a five-year CAGR of 21%. Net profit was 62.7 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 5.6% and a five-year CAGR of 14%. Operating cash flow was 91.4 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 22.4% and a five-year CAGR of 15%. Looking back at 2019, Huawei achieved robust operations, a stable net profit margin, and healthy cash flow. Breaking it down to the three businesses: consumer business grew rapidly with sales revenue of 467.3 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 34%. Enterprise business achieved revenue of 89.7 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 8.6%. The carrier business, impacted by carrier investment fluctuations, realized revenue of 296.7 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 3.8%. Breaking down to regions: China realized revenue of 506.7 billion RMB, increased by 36.2%. Due to the external environment, outside China the revenue decreased by 1.6% year-on-year. Among them, EMEA achieved revenue of 206 billion RMB, a slight year-on-year increase of 0.7%. APAC was 70.5 billion RMB, revenue affected by carrier investment fluctuations and dropped by 13.9%. Americas reached 52.5 billion RMB, up by 9.6%. In 2019, the company's net cash reached 258.9 billion RMB, an increase of 32%. Asset-liability ratio remained at a relatively stable level. Huawei has always pursued and maintained a stable capital structure. Despite the changes in its business and external environment, the overall capital structure remains stable. Technological innovation: basic research is fundamental to Huawei. Every year we invest more than 10% of revenue in research and development. R&D spend in 2019 was 131.7 billion RMB, or 18.9 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for approximately 15.3% of annual revenue. Over the past ten years, R&D investment exceeded 600 billion RMB, equivalent to 86 billion U.S. dollars. We have more than 96,000 R&D staff globally, making up about 49% of our total headcount. Respecting and protecting IPR is the only way to innovation. Huawei has been respecting and protecting the intellectual property rights of others. In 2019, Huawei obtained a total of 16,243 granted patents worldwide, of which 5,147 were granted in China, 8,756 were granted in Europe and America, accounting for 54%. According to the latest data from the European Patent Office, Huawei ranked number one in patent applications in Europe in 2019. Huawei has been granted a total of more than 85,000 patents around the globe. This is a snapshot of our financial numbers in 2019. You can see those numbers in our financial reports. Next, I want to share with you my outlook about the future and also our strategy for different businesses. Since the Industrial Revolution in 1760, human society has never been more prosperous and at the same time has never seen greater social challenges. These challenges include global warming, frequent natural disasters, and also the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, social divides, and increasing inequality. The network has become a basic part of human life, its impact and role will only become stronger. Therefore, the cybersecurity challenges will only be greater, not smaller. Unilateralism and economic confrontation are growing. Such actions based on anxiety and panic are not helping because they are hindering the fixes. Geopolitical unrest everywhere, politicizing almost everything is an emerging dangerous trend which will only add to the turmoil. We're also seeing inadequate drivers behind sustainable economic development. At the core of the issues, without a strong economic route that can sustain the problems, we have a hard time cracking them. Despite the global turmoil, humankind carries on its perpetual pursuit of prosperity and development. How to overcome the challenges, to get rid of turmoil, and to achieve a high level of prosperity are top priorities before us. We believe that developing this should come first. We must not abandon development just because there are challenges. Without development, there will never be an answer. Second, global cooperation must be strengthened. Many of the problems facing the world today are results of globalization that cannot be solved by returning to the agrarian age, nor can they be solved with anti-globalization measures. The ongoing coronavirus outbreak reminds us that the problems can only be resolved through strengthened cooperation. Global prosperity and challenges are both rooted in technological innovation. Finding the answer depends on innovation. Resolving the technological challenges primarily depends on technological innovation as well. Innovation is not the ultimate answer, but it's the key for us to get there. We need to develop trust amidst these dangers and rebuild mutual trust. There's a pressing need to come up with technological innovation that copes with the growing cybersecurity challenges, one underpinned by global cooperation and agreed common standards. It is a global consensus to address social and industry-wide issues, especially the underlying problems in development. One must have assorted infrastructure, in particular the ICT infrastructure. However, there is a lack of global efforts. Indeed, many of the problems are attributed to patchy infrastructure across the world. There is a pressing need to review and redefine the policies of infrastructure with the goal of effective enhancement. The ICT infrastructure has become the most fundamental among all kinds of infrastructure. Building fully connected and intelligent infrastructure is the essence of any solution to promote development and address challenges. This is our understanding, this is also our suggestion for global development. It is also what we are working towards. We firmly believe that humanity will enter the intelligent world in 20 to 30 years. According to research by Huawei and some universities, industry digitalization and intelligence are now in a phase of rapid development, bringing a lot of opportunities. In 2019, the global digital economy reached 15.6 trillion U.S. dollars, accounting for 19.7% of the world GDP. The number is expected to grow to 24% by 2025. The digital economy is outpacing the global economy. In 2019, the digital economy grew at a rate 3.5 times faster than the global economy. An analysis shows that over the past 30 years, every U.S. dollar of digital investment brought about 20 extra dollars in GDP, whereas every dollar in non-digital investment could only generate three dollars in GDP. Huawei focuses on ICT infrastructure and smart devices that enable digitalization and intelligence. Our investments are centered on connectivity, the cloud, computing, and intelligent devices. 5G, featuring ultra-high bandwidth, ultra-low latency, and massive connections, will bring ultimate experiences to consumers, accelerate digitalization and intelligence, and provide new momentum for social and economic development. We will actively promote global 5G development, work with the industry to build industry applications that can be replicated on a large scale and contribute to a thriving 5G ecosystem, helping telecom operators and their partners and consumers achieve greater business and societal value. As enterprises accelerate digital transformation, they need intelligent IP networks that provide higher bandwidth, reliable SLAs, and intelligent O&M. In 2019, we released a series of solutions such as AI-based 5G integrated bearer network intelligence, zero-loss DCN, and all-wireless campus network. We will continue to invest in innovation, carry out joint innovation with customers, and lead the development of intelligent IP networks and standards. Fiber networks are driven by experience instead of bandwidth. Last year, we released the intent-driven optical network strategy. Huawei's fiber networks provide not only ultimate experience for households but also more reliable and higher bandwidth connectivity for vertical industries. As a leader in the global optical communications industry, we will remain committed to key research and actively contribute to the standards. In terms of cloud computing businesses, to meet the requirements of the intelligent world for heterogeneous and diverse computing, we released the Kunpeng + Ascend computing strategy, illustrating things we do and things we'll leave to the partners. This strategy aims to build an open and thriving ecosystem to better serve our customers. We have integrated organizations related to storage, computing, and cloud services and established the Cloud & AI BG. In 2019, we released the AI processor Ascend 910, the world's fastest AI training cluster Atlas 900, Huawei Cloud Arctan cluster service, and MindSpore AI computing framework to complete our full-stack, all-scenario AI portfolio. We have also released the Huawei Developer Program 2.0. We plan to nurture 5 million developers with universities and the community in five years and invest 1.5 billion U.S. dollars to promote the development of the computing industry. We are committed to providing reliable, secure, trustworthy, and sustainable public cloud services and hybrid cloud solutions. Cloud services, AI, and 5G together can well enable data analytics and applications. We provide such an enabling platform for the intelligent world while working with partners to facilitate industry digitalization and intelligence. Huawei Cloud services were developing at a very fast speed and grew more than three times in 2019. Last year, Huawei smartphones shipped a record high of over 240 million units and global brand awareness increased to 93%, winning the trust and love of global consumers with excellent products and experience. Looking into the future, Huawei is committed to fulfilling its vision and mission on intelligent devices. Huawei is dedicated to building a smart life with ultimate experience for consumers in all scenarios. Huawei adheres to the 1+8+N all-scenario strategy. Through HMS, including AppGallery, HiLink, and other industry software, hardware, applications, and service partners, Huawei is able to meet consumers' requirements for all-scenario smart life. In addition, last year we launched a 1 billion U.S. dollar Shining Star program for device developers. As 5G, AI, and VR become more mature and democratized around the world, Huawei's smart device business will continue to gain traction for its development. The fast-developing ICT industry is not without its challenges. Moore's Law and Shannon's Law are approaching capacity. Therefore, Huawei upgraded its innovation strategy from the 1.0 era of technology and engineering innovation based on customer needs to the 2.0 era of vision-driven theoretical breakthroughs and basic technology inventions. The core concept of Innovation 1.0 is to meet customer requirements and challenges, innovate technologies and engineering, innovate products and solutions, and solve the problem of one to many. The key is to help customers and partners enhance competitiveness, help customers increase revenue or reduce costs, and help them achieve business success. Now we are talking about the Innovation 2.0 strategy. The core concept is that we believe the future world is an intelligent one, it's a fully connected one, and we'll explore theoretical breakthroughs and basic technology inventions to solve the world's intractable problems with zero-to-one innovation. As a leading global ICT infrastructure and intelligent device provider committed to sustainable development, we work with customers, partners, and third-party organizations around the world to advance the United Nations SDGs. ICT technologies will play an increasingly important role in delivering sustainable development. Last year, we incorporated social inclusion into our sustainable development strategy. The other three components are security and trustworthiness, environmental protection, and a harmonious ecosystem. Again, last year we officially released the Tech4All program, which aims to cooperate with multiple organizations around the world in education, environmental protection, health, and well-being. Technology could pass it on, leaving no one behind in the digital world. In terms of security and trustworthiness, we provided network assurance for more than 200 major events and natural disasters worldwide. Amidst the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, we will honor our commitment to shoulder our responsibilities and work with customers and partners to overcome the difficulties. Huawei's vision and mission is to bring digital to every person, home, and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. Thank you.
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Joe Kelly18:45
Thank you, Eric. So now it's time to hand the meeting across to the media to ask their questions. Before we start, I'd like to invite Madame Meng to the stage. Welcome. Just some explanatory comments before we start. This is for media who can ask questions. We're going to switch now from nine languages to two. Joining us on the stage is an interpreter who will be translating Mandarin to English. If you're online on the conferencing system to ask a question, there's a little button you click and you raise your hand. We will see your questions come in. We will try to choose those who ask questions in the order we see them come. For now, every journalist line is muted. Once we've identified you to ask a question, we will manually unmute your line. Please wait until we confirm that we can hear you before you start to ask your question. Your voice will be heard here in the room and also on the call itself. And if you're a journalist, your video will be blocked unless you've unblocked it. Can I ask please that you unmute your video so we can see when you ask your questions. So if you're a journalist that plans to ask a question or hopes to, please unclick that video link now. There will be a slight delay, please bear with us. And finally, there's many journalists on the line, please restrict your questions to one if you can, to give many people an opportunity. We have 60 minutes for the Q&A, so we have time to address many, many questions. So with that, I'm going to start with China Business News. Number two, dear correspondents, get ready for your question. So can we all mute the line please of Lina from China Business News.
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Lina21:34
I'm with China Business News. The global pandemic is still spreading. Will the attack have an impact on Huawei's business operations throughout the year? Will Huawei's supply chain be affected as well? What is Huawei's plan to address it?
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Eric Xu24:02
It is our hope the current pandemic will be brought under control as soon as possible. We also hope all the patients throughout the world can be treated and cured. I think the outbreak of the coronavirus is another reminder that we all live in a world of shared destiny. In order to address common challenges such as this one, it calls for solidarity and collaboration, because a virus sees no national borders, which is no distinction of races, colors, or individual wealth. As for Huawei, our first priority has been ensuring health and safety of our employees. Since the very beginning of the outbreak, we've taken a whole series of measures to ensure health and safety of Huawei employees. And on that basis, we also work to satisfy the needs and requirements coming from our customers and the governments around the world as they fight the pandemic. Today, all the production activities in China have been fully restored. Therefore, there would be no problem in the short-term for us to continue supplying our customers and partners around the world. At the same time, as everyone knows, the coronavirus is still spreading, especially outside of China. If that cannot be well controlled, it will cause challenges on a daily basis. We have been briefed by our supply chain division around how our global suppliers have been doing in light of the current situation. We've also been doing what we can in our power to support our partners and suppliers as they fight the epidemic, as they help to ensure supply to Huawei as well. At this point of time, we certainly cannot say for sure how the pandemic will evolve. If it cannot be well controlled, if some individual suppliers of Huawei cannot continue supplying to us, it will cause long-term challenges and it also causes uncertainty regarding whether Huawei will continue to supply to the market. Of course, this is something that we definitely don't want to see and we're also working hard on our side as well.
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Joe Kelly26:46
Okay, thank you. We're going to come secondly to Sharise Farm from CNN. Sharise, can you hear us?
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Sharise Farm27:13
Greetings from our Hong Kong apartment. Thank you so much for holding this virtual press conference. Eric, I hear you and you're saying that China's trying to get back to normal and Huawei's trying to get back to normal, but it just really feels that as the pandemic is sort of rolling out globally, it really feels like we're sort of entering this stage of before coronavirus and after coronavirus. So how do you see Huawei's business being fundamentally changed because of the coronavirus and the pandemic? Do you see changes in how you approach the supply chain or changes in how maybe you approach HR? I've heard that you're now giving virtual tours to carrier clients, for example. How do you see some of the things that you've rolled out because of the coronavirus pandemic? You know, they were sort of emergency measures, but will you continue them in the future?
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Eric Xu29:20
Whether the pandemic would mark a distinct distinction between the two eras of before and after the pandemic, I'm not sure. But for many families and for many individuals, what has been happening will definitely be an unforgettable memory that would always stay there. As for Huawei, there's no time or effort on our part to think about what kind of changes, what kind of improvements to be made in our business operations, because currently our priority is how to fastly respond and satisfy the needs of our customers around the world, including governments, in their fight against the pandemic, provided that the health and safety of our employees can be guaranteed. As we know, in light of the current situation, online conferencing, online shopping, online living, and also online entertainment has been under surge. That has caused a dramatic increase in network traffic. That also makes it ever more demanding to ensure safety and stability of networks around the world. Huawei serves more than 170 countries around the world. We have been working closely with our customers and also local governments to ensure stable and secure operations of the network. We're also working to address the ever-growing demand from increasing online activities. Of course, during the course of the pandemic, we have also identified some issues and challenges in our operations management that we need to work on. So when this whole pandemic is over, we definitely will take measures to address those issues to drive continuous improvements. For example, part of our findings is that you don't have to see face-to-face to have a good meeting, and you don't have to really all sit in one room to have a good press conference such as this one we are having today. We certainly bring about new perspectives in terms of how people look at networks and how people look at 5G. Thank you, thanks for the question, Sharise.
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Joe Kelly33:22
We're going to go to David Curtin next. David Curtin from Reuters, just wait for your line to be unmuted. And then Global Times, get ready.
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David Curtin33:46
Hi, we can hear you. How much of Huawei's revenue last year came from 5G equipment sales outside of China? And what sort of impact did US pressure have on those sales?
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Eric Xu34:25
Our revenue from 5G last year was more than three billion dollars, so percentage-wise it's very small, no matter when we look at the total revenue of Huawei or the total revenue of our carrier business. As a matter of fact, 2019 was a year when global 5G deployment was just kicked off. We haven't seen a large-scale 5G rollout yet. 5G has been such a heated topic. Never before have we seen a single technology in history that has been so extensively communicated to reach almost everyone, regardless of their age group. As a result of that, it saves the industry a lot of communication cost. As a matter of fact, the pressure coming from the United States on Huawei's 5G systems has brought about a quite substantial impact. At the very least, it has created a lot of extra workload that we have to take on. We had to take a lot of time explaining with our customers, partners, and also government regulators. There are also several cases where Huawei equipment was already used for their 2G, 3G, and 4G networks, and yet the customers did not choose Huawei's 5G or did not continue working with Huawei in selective geographies for different types of reasons. Those examples include Optus and VHA in Australia, TDC in Denmark, and Telia in Norway, and I believe some of you may have already seen those reports. In terms of 5G revenue in China and outside China, I did not prepare that number. Thank you.
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Joe Kelly37:56
Thanks for the question, David. Chen Ching-ching from Global Times, we're coming to you. Omar from CGTN, get ready for the question afterwards.
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Chen Ching-ching38:35
I'm Chen Ching-ching from Global Times. There have been recent reports saying that the White House is considering new export control restrictions, restricting companies such as TSMC to supply Huawei. How would Huawei address such escalations of export control from the United States?
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Eric Xu39:10
The journalist of CNBC was asking the same question during our interview this morning. I can only repeat my answer that I was given to CNBC. I also saw the report from Reuters, and I also saw the report of China Daily on March 29th. The China Daily report says if the measures were taken by the United States, the Chinese government would be left with no other choice but imposing similar measures on some companies in Washington. I think the Chinese government will not stand just to stand by watching Huawei to be slaughtered. And I believe the Chinese government may also take some countermeasures. Why would the Chinese government not ban the use in the China market of 5G chips or 5G chip-powered base stations, smartphones, and other smart devices provided by American companies out of cybersecurity reasons? Even if the situation you mentioned happened, Huawei and also other Chinese companies can choose to buy chipsets from, say, Samsung from Korea, MediaTek from Taiwan, and Spreadtrum from China, and use those chips to develop their own smartphones. Even in the long term, if Huawei was denied access to chip manufacturing, I believe there will be many Chinese companies that would have started working on chipsets in the long run. Huawei could look at together with other sources in Korea, Japan, Europe, and also Taiwan as we develop and design our products. If the US government can arbitrarily change the forum, make a directorial, a prodigal rule, that would be a destruction to the global technology ecosystem. If the Chinese government also follows with the countermeasures, we can imagine what kind of an impact that would be on the industry. This type of destructive ripple effect on the global industry would be astonishing. If the Pandora's box was to be opened, we are probably going to see catastrophic destruction to the global industry chain. And by then, it's not going to be only one company of Huawei that could be destroyed.
I hope that the global industry can work together where everyone can focus on the challenges that the industry and also the customers are faced with and work together to come up with trustworthy products which are wanted in society. In that context, I hope this story is not true for a home invasion, otherwise we might be seeing an endless flow of disastrous aftermath. Not a single player in a global value chain can stay immune.
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Joe Kelly44:50
Thank you, especially Chen Ching-ching. Omar from CGT and Simon from Bloomberg, get ready, you're coming next. So last year, 2019, you could say probably a tough year for Huawei, having that FCC litigation, the entity list. But also, we saw Huawei invite a lot of media personnel to come visit their headquarters in Shenzhen. A lot of interviews were given. I kind of want to go with this going forward this year. What more does Huawei want to do in terms of transparency, in terms of countering those claims by several governments, specifically the United States? How does Huawei want to better showcase who they are to kind of deflect those claims that they have any connections to the government? You could just expand on what Huawei plans to do going forward in 2020.
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Eric Xu45:55
I think primarily we are going to follow the same approaches that we took in 2019.
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Joe Kelly46:52
Thank you. Thank you, Omar. Simon, we're coming to you. Takagi from Sankei News and Massey from China Daily, get ready, you're coming next. But for now, Simon from Bloomberg. Simon, can we hear you? Simon, don't leave that man. Okay.
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Simon47:15
Eric, you mentioned it just now, the US ban has always had a very substantial impact. Can you share your outlook of Huawei's business in 2020 in light of the US ban and the difficulties Huawei is going to face in markets outside of China when it comes to the 5G business? What specific impact can be expected? And also, with some numbers regarding the 5G smartphone sales in 2020.
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Eric Xu48:28
I kept saying that 2019 was probably the most difficult year for Huawei. However, even in 2019, we still enjoyed very fast growth before May 16th. We also had a substantial stockpile in our inventory to respond to the challenges. In that context, I think 2020 will be more difficult. It's going to be the most difficult year for Huawei because we will be subject to the entity listing throughout the year. According to some in the industry, Huawei's inventory that we put in place beforehand is about to run out. Therefore, 2020 is going to be a very crucial year to test whether Huawei's supply continuity program can really work in an effective way. On top of that, the outbreak of the coronavirus is something unexpected. It brings about new unexpected challenges like economic decline, financial turmoil, and also shrinking market demand. When the global pandemic is still fast developing, our current priority is to first ensure the health and safety of our employees and on that basis respond to the needs and requirements of our customers and also governments around the world in their fight against the pandemic. We don't have the time yet to either forecast or evaluate how our whole year numbers would look like. As a matter of fact, at this point of time, it's very difficult to make an accurate forecast. But in 2020, we'll try everything we can to continue to survive so that we can release our 2020 annual reports at the same time next year.
Regarding the sales prospect of the Huawei 5G phones in markets outside of China, you all know that after May 16th of last year, our newly launched Huawei phones could not have GMS pre-installed. In order to protect the interest and also user experience of all Huawei smartphone users globally, Huawei launched HMS. We also hope that the applications from Google can be also hosted in Huawei's App Store, our App Gallery, just like how they are doing with Apple's App Store. This can help deliver more and better applications that can be made available to consumers. That could also help to ensure all the users of Huawei 5G smartphones outside of China can also be the users of Google's applications. It is certainly our hope that we can sell more 5G smartphones in markets outside China, but it's truly difficult for us to make an accurate forecast. As of now, it largely depends on how the progress would look like in terms of our ecosystem around HMS.
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Joe Kelly54:30
Thank you. We've lost Sankei, so we're going to come to China Daily next and then to Dan Strumpf from The Wall Street Journal. Massey from China Daily, are you there?
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Massey54:42
Hi, Eric. Currently, Europe is one of the regions that's been hit the worst by the pandemic. How would the 5G network deployment be affected by the pandemic in Europe? And looking at China, China has clearly accelerated 5G network deployment after the pandemic is brought under control. What is Huawei's view regarding 5G opportunities for Huawei in the China market?
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Eric Xu55:46
5G deployment in Europe will certainly be delayed to the extent and to the time when the pandemic will be brought under control. In China, after the pandemic was brought under control, indeed it has accelerated 5G deployment. Currently, all the three big telecom operators are in the process of tendering. I believe for all the three big telecom operators in China, they will complete the planned amount of the 5G deployment or even slightly higher than their year beginning plan. In terms of how many more 5G systems that could be deployed versus the year beginning targets of telecom operators, that depends on several factors: the ability for vendors such as Huawei to supply and whether they roll out it would be fast enough so that we can win back the time during the pandemic, and also of course whether the telecom operators would have sufficient budget.
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Joe Kelly57:47
Thank you. Thank you, Massey. Dan Strumpf, Wall Street Journal, we're coming to you and then we're coming to Celia from South China Morning Post. Dan, can you hear us?
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Dan Strumpf58:04
I hear you. Can you hear me? Thanks a lot. My question is, Huawei posted profit for the year was about flat, but your revenue grew pretty substantially. What do you attribute the slowdown in profit growth last year? And I was also hoping you could answer why your share of overseas revenue declined last year. What do you attribute that to? Is it to the US restrictions or did you see other factors at play? If you could address that as well, please.
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Eric Xu59:02
I think it's pretty easy to understand why the growth rate of our net profit last year decreased. After Huawei was added to the entity list on May 16th of last year by the US Commerce Department, we certainly had to invest more into R&D to so-called fix the holes in our supply chain. Because out of a sudden, a large number of suppliers of Huawei could not continue supplying to us, so we had to reboot to a certain degree our supply chain. In that context, it was certainly impossible for Huawei to continue pursuing as high growth rate in our net profits as 2017 or 2018. We had to fix the holes, we had to review our supply chain, and survival turned out to be the first priority. As for the lower percentage of our overseas revenue in our total revenue mix, one of the big reasons for that was no more access of newly launched smartphones from Huawei to the Google GMS after May 16th. The consumer business outside of China was growing very fast before May 16th and was declining very fast after May 16th. It only started to bounce back since Q4 of last year. The impact on Huawei's consumer business revenue in markets outside of China was at least ten billion dollars. Naturally, the percentage of our overseas revenue as of our total revenue would be smaller.
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Joe Kelly1:02:53
Thank you. Thanks for your question, Dan. Celia from SCMP, we're coming to you next and then we're coming to Brussels to Polity after that. Celia Chen from SCMP, Huawei's yours.
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Celia Chen1:03:10
Hi, Eric. Huawei smartphone has captured a very big market share in China, but is not doing as well in markets outside of China. We also noticed that many Chinese phone vendors start to penetrate premium segments outside of China. So how far away were the balance of domestic and international phone business, especially in light of the current pandemic?
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Eric Xu1:04:12
Our choice is very simple. In China, we are committed to implement our 1+8+N seamless AI life strategy. At the same time, we would also work to build the HMS ecosystem so that we are able to sell Huawei smartphones in markets outside China. We certainly hope to see continued access of Huawei smartphones to the GMS as a second trade engine, but that decision is not for Huawei to make. What we can choose to work on ourselves is to develop the HMS as well as the application gallery that goes with it. It certainly is going to be very difficult, but we are left with no other choices. We certainly do not position ourselves as a domestic player for these smart devices business. We certainly look at a global market for this business.
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Joe Kelly1:06:18
Hi, thanks for taking a question. I wanted to ask about the European market specifically in light of the measures that European governments are taking to restrict the role of what's called high-risk vendors. A lot of European governments count Huawei as being part of that group of high-risk vendors. First of all, I just wanted to ask again whether you could break down a little bit the impact of the measures being taken across Europe right now on the carrier business figures in Europe specifically. And then secondly, I was wondering if Huawei considers these measures taken in countries like France, the UK, perhaps other European countries as being discriminatory or unfair in any way, whether it considers taking steps or actions to address discrimination or unfair competition.
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Eric Xu1:07:17
At the very least from public reports, I have never seen or heard that any member state of the European Union has labeled Huawei clearly as a high-risk vendor. Because you know, UK now is not out of the European Union anymore. European countries, as you are based there, are decisions based on facts. They clearly know what cybersecurity actually means. We have been engaging and communicating with various European governments. There are so many things that have not happened, so I think it's not good to make comments on things that have not happened.
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Joe Kelly1:09:33
Thank you. Thank you, Lawrence. Takagi from Sankei News is next and then Guangzhou.
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Takagi1:09:43
My name is Takagi. 5G service started in Japan last week and Japanese mobile companies were cooperating with you in the technology of 5G, but you are all regulated by the government. Please tell me your strategy about 5G in Japan, for example, joint research or sales of base stations and mobile phones.
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Eric Xu1:10:45
I have never heard that Huawei is banned from participating in 5G in Japan. We have been communicating with our customers as well as our regulators. The only operator we work together with on mobile is SoftBank. We have had no collaboration with NTT DoCoMo and KDDI in Japan in the mobile domain. SoftBank Mobile today has not deployed a large number of 5G base stations. We hope that Huawei's cooperation with SoftBank Mobile can be extended from 4G to 5G. And of course, this is a decision that needs to be made by our customers.
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Joe Kelly1:12:27
Thank you. Thank you, Takagi. We're now coming to Guangzhou. Ginza, are you there?
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Ginza1:12:42
Hi, Eric. You've said that further escalation of US export controls to Huawei would cause systemic risk. But what if the US government was determined to escalate its restrictions? What kind of an impact would that be on the semiconductor industry of the United States?
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Eric Xu1:13:46
I would not share in-depth analysis here. Instead, I would refer you to a BCG report commissioned by the United States Semiconductor Industry Association. It's called 'How Restricting Trade with China Could End US Semiconductor Leadership.' There is a very good explanation in that report around the question you raised. A simple search would help you to locate that report. I think the analysis there definitely would be more in-depth compared to the answer that I could give here.
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Joe Kelly1:15:00
Thank you. We've now got a change. We've got two questions I will read out. The first is from Roberto Kompany, who's an analyst with Analysys Mason. How do you believe that multi-vendor, open RAN, IP solutions will challenge Huawei's business over the next five years?
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Eric Xu1:15:38
I think the impact on our business would be negligible. Open RAN is not a standard, it's not another 5G standard. In essence, it's only an architecture and a method of implementation. Base stations that are to be designed and developed based on the open RAN architecture and the technologies still have to follow agreed 5G standards, still have to satisfy the needs of telecom operators around power consumption, performance, and value for money. Open RAN advocates openness and open source, it's only an implementation method to implement the 5G base stations or possibly base stations of 6G. Looking back into the history of this mobile communications industry, there was one revolution we saw during the times of 3G in terms of how base station was implemented. That's when Huawei released its distributed base station. Before distributed base stations were launched to the market, the baseband unit and the radio unit were integrated into one equipment and was sheltered in an air-conditioned room. With the invention of the distributed base station from Huawei, the radio unit was separated and separately mounted on tower. That substantially increased the performance and also coverage of base stations, and that solution also has become a way of implementation of 4G and 5G base stations. And actually, it has become a de facto standard in the industry. In the times of 2G, 3G, 4G, or 5G, when 3GPP was working on standards setting, the focus has always been interoperability to ensure smartphones can interwork with base stations, base stations can interwork with the core network, and base stations can work together with each other across different vendors. That is the foundation to ensure global roaming. And there has never been a time that the 3GPP would look specifically at the implementation methods and architectures of different vendors. From the perspective of telecom operators, it's not at their area of interest in terms of how base stations are implemented. As a matter of fact, the way of implementation between different equipment vendors is different. To telecom operators, they care about the performance, the quality, the value for money of the base station products coming from different vendors. In our industry, we have had single RAN, and now we are seeing open RAN. No matter it's single RAN or open RAN, they must have followed agreed and established 5G standards so that all smartphones can interwork with the base stations, base stations can interwork with each other, and base stations can interwork with core network. Single RAN is like special-purpose computing, and open RAN is like general-purpose computing. There has always been this race between general-purpose and special-purpose computing. Companies such as Intel, they've always wanted to replace today's special-purpose computing with general-purpose computing. But to date, we have seen more scenarios and use cases where special-purpose computing seems to be a better fit, especially after the increasing adoption of AI. There was once a meeting with the former CEO of Intel, Brian, and he wanted the Huawei base station to use Intel's x86 processors. And I told him this is like a race between general-purpose computing and Huawei's self-developed special-purpose computing. If one day the general-purpose computing can catch up in terms of performance and cost structure, Huawei would not use Intel's general-purpose computing because it takes more time and investment for Huawei to do it itself. Open RAN in essence is general-purpose computing. I think there would be a long time to go before the power consumption, cost structure, and performance of general computing to be able to satisfy the needs of customers. Therefore, in the short term, I do not see major impact on Huawei's business. But maybe many people have not noticed what is the most critical technology in the area of mobile communications, that's in the area of radio access. No matter it's open RAN or single RAN, you have to come up with the products like RRUs or AAUs that can be able to meet the needs of customers around the performance, around power consumption, and around the cost structure.
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Joe Kelly1:25:36
Okay, I think we're now coming to the last question, and this again online. And I guess, Eric, it's one for you, and it's from Clinton Lou at McGill University in Canada. Could you give some further information about the new IP standard strategy raised by Huawei?
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Eric Xu1:25:57
I actually answered that same question yesterday and I would answer that question again here. I'm very pleased that new IP is drawing attention from the industry as well as friends from the press. I gave the name of new IP myself. At the very beginning, it was a different name. We had a discussion around the next generation of IP when Huawei was doing research on 5G new radio. And to me, the future mission of next-generation IP was similar to the mission of 5G new radio. So I simply wondered why not call it new IP, just like the way we call the 5G new radio. If we do a little bit of search on the internet, then we can realize that IP technology was invented first in 1969 and the protocol was finalized in 1978. It's almost 50 years. Of course, IP has achieved enormous achievements over the past 50 plus years. At the very beginning, IP was designed to connect all the computers of the world for office or productivity purpose, and then it was extended to also connect all the phones that consumers have to deliver mobile Internet services. However, for so many years, IP technology was not sufficient to satisfy the needs of industrial Internet, particularly around low latency and security. There was a similar story for 5G as well. While 5G was supposed to satisfy the increasing need for enhanced mobile broadband experiences by consumers, it also promises to deliver low latency and massive connectivity that is required for IoT or industrial Internet. It's the same story for new IP. While it is supposed to satisfy the needs around mobile Internet and productivity, it is also supposed to satisfy the needs for industrial Internet, things like low latency and security. Here today, new IP is still a research topic where the IP experts coming from Huawei discuss and work together with scientists and engineers from around the world. Currently, IP experts from various countries, Italy, the UK, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Spain, etc., are participating freely in the research and innovation around the next generation of IP with the hope that the challenges can be well addressed and resolved so that IP can be better prepared for the future. So that the new IP can not only build on what the traditional IP has achieved but also be able to satisfy the needs for industrial Internet. I don't know why I was taking an interview with the Financial Times yesterday in the afternoon and they raised the same question. And I said Financial Times should not politicize the new IP discussions from the very beginning because this is a pure technical topic. Technical experts do not have untold secrets or agenda. They come together only for free discussions about how the future of technology goes. It's not that complicated. There is no political agenda. This is a pure technical discussion that should not get politicized.
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Joe Kelly1:33:32
Thank you. And thank you. We're now out of time. You may very well have additional questions. Please submit them through your PR manager. For now, I thank you for your participation and for your questions. Please join me in thanking our panel for addressing those questions. It's Terry Xu and Madam Xu, and of course to Ken Wong and the other interpreters who made today's event possible. Thank you very much.