China’s Economic Resilience ｜ Huawei： Thirty Fames Born to Die.
Jim Collins described the leaders of an excellent enterprise in his book From Excellence to Excellence: "They often don’t stand at the front desk and become the darling of the media, talk about their ideas or become celebrities. Most of them are like aliens. They are quiet, introverted, unappealing and even a little shy. Their personal qualities of humility and indomitable professionalism are all in one. They are hidden behind the team and coordinate the symphony of the team. "
In the Internet era of pursuing individuality, an entrepreneur seems to let people see such a shadow.
In 1987, Ren Zhengfei, a middle-aged man who was desperate and unhappy, spent more than 20,000 yuan to establish Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. in the residential building of Shenzhen Nanyou Group. At first, there were only a few employees, and his main business was selling switch equipment.
In 2019, Ren Zhengfei celebrated its 32nd anniversary. Huawei has grown into one of the most successful private enterprises and the best technology enterprises in China. In 2012, Huawei replaced Ericsson as the world’s largest manufacturer of communication equipment; According to the data of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in 2018, Huawei ranked first in the world in the number of patent applications; In the list of the world’s top 500 companies in 2017, Huawei ranked 72nd in the world.
Tian Tao, a management consultant of Huawei, once said in his speech, "Today’s Huawei covers markets in more than 170 countries and regions around the world. Where there are people in the world, there are Huawei people, and where there are no people, there are also equipment and services provided by Huawei." It can be said that Huawei’s more than 30 years are full of worries and perseverance, and it is a long March of business with blood and tears.
"We should think about winter in spring and summer."
Ren Zhengfei’s generation of entrepreneurs often have the same characteristics: poor and ambitious.
For many years, Ren Zhengfei rarely gave interviews. Most of what the outside world knows about his thoughts comes from his internal speeches or letters at Huawei.
In 2001, Ren Zhengfei published a long article "Winter in Huawei" with more than 6,000 words. In his article, he wrote to Huawei employees: "Have you considered what we should do if one day, the company’s sales decline, profits decline and even go bankrupt? Is it spring now? But winter is not far away, so we should think about winter in spring and summer. Winter in IT industry is not necessarily winter for other companies, but it may be winter for Huawei. Huawei’s winter may come colder. We are still too young. After ten years of smooth development, our company has never experienced setbacks. Without setbacks, we don’t know how to go to the right path. Suffering is a fortune, and we have not suffered, which is our greatest weakness. "
At that time, Huawei jumped to the top of the top 100 electronic companies in China, while Ren Zhengfei was talking about failure and suffering.
For the crisis, Huawei has maintained its inherent vigilance. When Huawei was founded ten years ago, Ren Zhengfei said in an internal speech: "In the past ten years, I have been thinking about failure every day, turning a blind eye to success, and I have no sense of honor or pride, but a sense of crisis."
Perhaps it is this sense of urgency that made Huawei live through the first decade.
At the turn of spring and summer in 2019, Huawei’s precautions made Huawei stand the test again. In response to the inclusion of Huawei in the "Entity List" by the BIS of the US Department of Commerce, in the early morning of May 17, Huawei Heartfelt Community forwarded a letter from He Tingbo, President of Huawei Hisilicon, to employees: "Huawei has made the assumption of extreme survival many years ago. It is expected that one day, all advanced chips and technologies in the United States will be unavailable, and Huawei will continue to serve customers." Haisi will launch the "spare tire" plan to fulfill the company’s commitment to continuous customer service, so as to ensure the strategic safety and continuous supply of most products of the company. "This is a historical choice, and all the spare tires we have built will be completed overnight ‘ Turn positive ’ ！”
On the same day, Huawei’s president’s office sent a letter to employees, saying that Huawei had predicted the US crackdown many years ago, and the difficulties could not stop the pace of progress.
Ren Zhengfei said in a concentrated interview with the media on the 21st that the current restriction order will affect Huawei’s low-end products, but in the high-end products, especially in the 5G field, Huawei will never be affected. Huawei maintains a certain mass production capacity in key components, including chips, and will not lead to negative growth because of the "supply failure" of the US. The company expects that the growth rate will decline this year, but it will still maintain positive growth.
"Theoretical innovation: the bench should be cold for ten years"
For more than 30 years, the economic and social environment of China and the world has changed several times, but Huawei is not disturbed by the outside world, has never done an inch of real estate business, and is indifferent to stock trading and hot money. It just wants to do one thing well, that is, stick to the field of information technology research and development and product development for a long time. In Ren Zhengfei’s words, Huawei "only charged at a city wall".
Huawei is an ICT solution provider, and digital and intelligent construction is bound to be inseparable from technological innovation. In Huawei, there are two "10%" systems. One of them is to spend 10% of its operating income on scientific research every year. Adhering to this system has made Huawei the most powerful technology company in China and even in the world.
According to Huawei data, among the 180,000 Huawei employees in the world, nearly half are engaged in research and development, and almost "there is one developer in every two Huawei people". Huawei has established competence centers in dozens of countries and regions around the world. R&D teams all over the world always keep a close eye on the main channel to ensure that Huawei does not consume strategic competitive power at non-strategic competitive points. In the past 30 years, Huawei has two indicators that have been higher than profits for a long time, namely R&D investment and human resources investment.
Huawei’s financial report shows that in 2018, R&D expenses reached 101.5 billion yuan, and investment accounted for 14.1% of sales revenue. In the past decade, Huawei has invested a total of more than 480 billion yuan in research and development expenses. Long-term and massive investment in innovation provides the most powerful guarantee for driving Huawei’s high-quality development.
In technological innovation, Huawei pays special attention to persistent exploration and long-term investment in basic research and cutting-edge technologies. In an exclusive interview with Xinhua News Agency, Ren Zhengfei once said that the biggest problem in the high-tech field is that everyone should be calm, and it is impossible to make an industry without theoretical foundation. "The bench will be cold for ten years", and the theoretical bench will not be cold for ten years, and it may take longer.
Research and development investment focuses on basic science, which is Huawei’s characteristic. Many people were impressed. When speaking at the National Science and Technology Innovation Conference held in 2016, Ren Zhengfei mentioned the idea of bravely breaking into the "no man’s land". He said, "major innovation is the survival law of no-man’s land. Without theoretical breakthrough, technological breakthrough and a lot of technical accumulation, it is impossible to produce explosive innovation."
Huawei requires R&D investment in theoretical basic fields to account for 20% of the total R&D investment & mdash; 30%。 This kind of investment, with high cost, slow effect and high risk, is rarely involved by enterprises, but it builds Huawei’s future competitiveness.
In April this year, Huawei’s innovation strategy ushered in a qualitative change. In the era of innovation 1.0, Huawei is innovating products, technologies and solutions based on customer needs, while the upgraded era of innovation 2.0 is based on vision-driven theoretical breakthroughs and basic technological inventions.
The 5G minimalist solution "leaves complexity to yourself and gives simplicity to customers"
The more investment in innovation, the greater the return. 5G is the best example. Since the development of 5G in 2009, today’s Huawei can bring 5G networks to operators faster than other friendly companies.
Once the 5G competition is in full swing, it is impossible to stop. China has invested heavily in order to take the lead in the 5G competition, and so has Huawei. In the overweight of 5G key technologies, Huawei has also suffered a trough, not recognized by the outside world, and even seen the decline collectively. In 2018, when 5G sounded the horn, Huawei 5G rose rapidly and gradually occupied major markets. However, seeing the rapid development of Huawei, many developed countries have restricted Huawei’s entry in the name of security.
"5G is not an atomic bomb". Faced with all kinds of "Huawei threat theory" represented by the United States, Ren Zhengfei tried to make the outside world eliminate the misunderstanding of Huawei, but the effect was minimal, because Huawei’s strength in 5G is obvious to all.
Ren Zhengfei listed long code and short code as two key technologies of 5G. He once said that around these two equations, tens of thousands of people in dozens of companies have been following the research for decades, which has become a standard. If you have done it, you will know how difficult it is. Although it was difficult, Huawei did it. In November 2016, the Polar Code scheme promoted by China became the eMBB (Enhanced Mobile Broadband) scene coding scheme for the 5G control channel. If the whole data is compared to a "truck", the control channel is equivalent to controlling the running system of the truck, and Huawei has become a supplier of controlling the running system with absolute advantage.
At present, the whole world hopes to accelerate the large-scale deployment of 5G, but the deployment of 5G faces a series of new problems, and the scale is the first one. The scale of 5G construction will greatly exceed the level of 3G/4G in the same period. To cope with this complicated and ever-changing deployment pressure, we can only rely on minimalist solutions.
"Leave complexity to yourself and give simplicity to customers" is Huawei’s 5G creed. To this end, at the 2019 Mobile World Congress, Huawei released a 5G minimalist solution. This has accelerated the pace of 5G scale deployment. It took 10 years for 3G to reach 500 million users worldwide, and 5 years for 4G. The industry estimates that 5G will only take 3 years.
Can 5G deployment really be simpler than 4G? In January, Huawei held a 5G conference in Beijing, which gave many people a positive answer to this question. At this meeting, Huawei launched two 5G chips that can be directly used for commercial use. In the nearly 40-year history of mobile communication, through the joint efforts of Huawei and the industry, 5G has achieved almost simultaneous maturity of intelligent terminals and systems for the first time.
On the road to 5G, Huawei’s "industry firsts" have contributed to promoting the commercial deployment of 5G from 2020 to 2019. The strong are self-reliant, and Huawei 5G continues to win multiple 5G orders. By the end of March, Huawei had signed 40 5G commercial contracts around the world, and more than 70,000 5G base stations were sent to all parts of the world.
"We believe that choosing Huawei’s customers will win the best technical and commercial competitiveness in the 5G era; Choosing Huawei’s country will win the development advantage of the next wave of digital economy. " Guo Ping, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said confidently.
"We must stand up in the field of chips and reduce our dependence on the United States."
Huawei Hisilicon’s R&D products all turned positive overnight, which is a card for Huawei to take precautions and will become the foundation of most of Huawei’s terminal products in the future.
In 2018, the shipments of Huawei and Glory dual-brand mobile phones exceeded 200 million units, becoming the first mobile phone brand sales list in China and the third largest mobile phone brand manufacturer in the world. With 48.4% revenue, Huawei mobile phone has become the fastest growing branch business and the largest business unit of Huawei.
Huawei launched its first high-end product Ascend P1 in 2011. Due to the immature technology of HiSilicon k3v2, the product suffered from waterloo. After learning from a painful experience, the P6 developed by Huawei later won the sales of 4 million units with the high price of putting all your eggs in one basket, which was a success in one fell swoop.
Since then, Huawei’s investment in high-end products has been out of control. With the maturity of Kirin chip, the Mate series and P series released later are all used. The newly released Mate20 and P30 series begin to fully enable Kirin 980 chip and are the first AI chips applied to mobile phones in the industry.
The success of Kirin chip made Haisi affirmed by Ren Zhengfei: "We must stand up and reduce our dependence on the United States." In the minds of users, Huawei has become synonymous with high-end mobile phones.
Since 2016, the pattern of domestic mobile phones has become "Huami OV", and the concentration of head brands has exceeded 80%. Huawei has become the NO.1 in China’s mobile phone industry. Since then, in the global mobile phone market, Huawei has the strength to compete with Apple and Samsung.
Stand at thirty. In Ren Zhengfei’s view, Huawei is just an "aircraft carrier that has just set sail" and will always focus on the main channel. He said that Huawei’s technical theoretical framework model will implement "Moore’s Law of Cost Reduction per Bit" to simplify the network. As a result of the continuous simplification of the network, Huawei’s sales revenue will continue to decrease, but it will benefit the whole society.
At the end of 2018, Huawei released the New Year’s speech, "How can you succeed without hardship?" Guo Ping, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said: "Every major event is calm, and the uncertainty of international politics is dealt with by the certainty of legal compliance. We are not depressed by the vicious events and setbacks of one incident at a time. We will be more frustrated and more brave. On the contrary, these extremely unfair events have pushed us to the top of the world. "
Whether it is in the coldest Antarctic and Arctic in the world, or the highest elevation Mount Everest, or the jungle and desert in Africa … … People can enjoy the communication convenience supported by the equipment and services provided by Huawei.
For more than 30 years, Huawei was born with worries. From a poor start-up, expanding and growing into one of the global industry leaders, there is a strong will and determination behind it. This is precisely the epitome of China’s strong economic resilience. No matter how the external situation changes, the most important thing is to do your own thing, persist in independent innovation and persist in hard work. Only a struggling nation has a future, and only a struggling individual has a future. Similarly, a struggling enterprise has a future. (Text/Chen Tingyu Ling Jiwei Kevin·Z)