Produced | Sohu Technology
Author | Zhang Yating
“Huawei’s cooperative car has a much better experience than Tesla”
“6G should be introduced to the market around 2030”
……
From April 12th to 14th, the Huawei Analyst Conference was held in Shenzhen. Under heavy pressure, how will the future go? Rotating Chairman Xu Zhijun elaborated on the five key strategic measures in the future and responded to hot topics such as “sanctions”, “cloud business structure adjustment”, “car building”, and “6G”.
After being suppressed by three rounds of US bans, Huawei still survived. The 2020 financial report shows that Huawei has achieved both revenue and net profit growth. Xu Zhijun believes that “performance is in line with expectations.” However, the crisis has quietly emerged. Huawei’s 2020 revenue growth rate is the lowest in the past 10 years. Before this, Huawei has maintained a double-digit growth rate for 6 consecutive years.
Under the ban, Huawei’s mobile phone business has been most affected. Its shipments have fallen out of the top five in Q4 last year. The continuity of 5G base station chip supply has also been questioned. The ballast business will inevitably fall into a “deceleration” state.
Reducing chip dependence and increasing the proportion of software revenue has become the key to Huawei’s “survival”. It can be found that the current Hongmeng, cloud business, and automotive businesses that Huawei focuses on are all focused on the software layer, and ecological construction has become an important breakthrough point.
“The goal for this year is to survive, but we still have to strive to live a little bit better.” Xu Zhijun said frankly that he has no illusions about Huawei being removed from the entity list and will work and live on the entity list for a long time.
Increase software revenue and solve continuous supply chain problems
Facing the worries of the outside world, Xu Zhijun gave a “centring agent” at the analyst conference and proposed five key strategic measures for the future.
- It is necessary to optimize the industrial mix and enhance the resilience of the industry, especially the enhancement of software capabilities, and strengthen the investment in the weakly related industries of advanced technology and the investment in the smart auto parts industry; 2. To promote the full play of the value of 5G, define 5.5G, and lead the continuous evolution of 5G; 3 .User-centered to create a seamless intelligent experience across the scene; 4. Reduce energy consumption through technological innovation and realize a low-carbon society; 5. Work hard to solve the problem of continuous supply.
Regarding optimizing industry mix and enhancing software capabilities. Xu Zhijun pointed out that he hopes to further use the improvement of software capabilities to reduce the demand for and dependence on chips, and at the same time enhance the competitiveness of products. At the end of November 2018, Huawei’s board of directors passed a decision to invest US$2 billion to enhance the company’s software engineering capabilities. Now Huawei will continue to invest unswervingly to improve the entire Huawei’s software engineering capabilities within a five-year cycle. One step.
He said that the recent adjustments to the organization and cadres of the cloud and computing BG are because we believe that the core of the cloud is software, and we hope to strengthen the organization of the software and decouple it from the hardware. At the same time, increase investment and better face the future to achieve the growth of the software industry.
Xu Zhijun believes that it is necessary to continue to increase investment in the smart car parts industry, especially in autonomous driving software. “The goal is to realize driverless cars. Once realized, it will subvert almost all industries related to cars. This is also the most disruptive industrial change that can be seen in 10 years.”
In terms of 5G business, Xu Zhijun said that the most important thing is to increase the development of 5G To C, speed up the improvement of 5G To B solutions, and strengthen the large-scale commercialization of 5G To B. In terms of 5G To B, as of 2020, Huawei has participated in the practice of more than 3,000 innovative projects around the world, and signed more than 1,000 5G To B project contracts in more than 20 industries with operators and partners.
In terms of seamless experience in all scenarios, Xu Zhijun pointed out that based on HarmonyOS and HMS, Huawei will continue to enrich the two ecosystems of hardware and services together with developers and ecological partners. “It is expected that in 2021, 40+ mainstream brands and 100 million devices will become the new entrance to the HarmonyOS experience.”
More than $1 billion has been invested in the research and development of smart car parts
“Xiaomi has built cars, why doesn’t Huawei build cars?” Xu Zhijun said, this question has been asked many times, and some think that Huawei has the brand and technical capabilities and should build cars.
In fact, Huawei’s decision to “not build a car” was made carefully after years of discussion. Xu Zhijun said that Huawei began to conduct car-related research in 2012, when a car networking laboratory was established under the 2012 laboratory.
“But as research continues to move forward, the automotive industry is constantly changing, from a simple electric car to an autonomous car.” Xu Zhijun said that he had communicated with many high-level auto companies and found that the industry The industry needs Huawei’s ICT capabilities more than Huawei’s brand.
In 2018, Huawei’s management team met in Sanya and made a decision: it is clear that Huawei will not build cars and help car companies build good cars. “This decision has not changed so far.”
At present, Huawei chooses to use the “Huawei inside” approach to support car companies to build their sub-brands. “We have selected three car companies and launched three sub-brand cars, such as BAIC ARC FOX. A series of cars will be launched in the fourth quarter. We have also cooperated with Chongqing Changan and Guangzhou Automobile.”
“Investment in research and development of smart car parts this year exceeded 1 billion US dollars.” Xu Zhijun pointed out that smart car BU is an industry that Huawei has invested heavily in. It has its own sales, delivery, and other organizational capabilities. It is a function of the company in addition to consumer BG. The most complete BU.
Xu Zhijun believes that China now needs 30 million cars a year, and there will be more in the future. Even if it is only in the Chinese market, it is enough to get an average of 10,000 yuan in income from each car every year.
“At the Shanghai Auto Show in April, the “Huawei inside” cooperation mode car will provide everyone with an autonomous driving experience in a densely populated urban area. Our team told me: they are the best and can It is much better than Tesla to achieve autonomous driving without intervention for 1,000 kilometers in the urban area.”
Let Cloud BU focus on developing cloud services
Recently, Huawei has intensively adjusted its cloud business, which has aroused heated discussions in the outside world. On April 9, Huawei announced the appointment of Rotating Chairman Xu Zhijun as Chairman of Huawei Cloud, and Huawei Consumer BG CEO Yu Chengdong was appointed as Huawei Cloud CEO.
A week ago, on April 2, Huawei announced the abolition of Cloud&AI (cloud and computing) BG. On March 30, Huawei just appointed 11 members including Zhang Pingan (formerly President of Consumer Business Cloud Services) as Cloud&AI BG managers; Zhang Pingan was appointed as Cloud BU President.
Regarding the changes in HUAWEI CLOUD, Xu Zhijun pointed out that the business model of HUAWEI CLOUD is an online business and a subscription business model. Therefore, Huawei Cloud has always been an independent BU operating end-to-end and relatively closed-loop.
Xu Zhijun said that when the cloud and computing BG was first established, he hoped that servers and storage could work together with Huawei Cloud. However, some problems were discovered during the coordination operation, which actually consumed the energy of the cloud team. “So now we return the server and storage, let the cloud BU concentrate on developing cloud services.”
“Strengthening the positioning of HUAWEI CLOUD BU is actually a measure of the company to strengthen software investment.” Xu Zhijun emphasized, “Huawei CLOUD invests more in software and has its own industry rules. We hope that it will be more independent and develop with more freedom. To increase the proportion of software and services in Huawei’s total revenue.”
6G should be introduced to the market around 2030
Xu Zhijun proposed that 6G should be introduced to the market around 2030. “But what 6G is now, we don’t know yet.”
“The industry hopes that around 2030, like 4G and 5G, there is something to contribute to consumers and enterprises.” Xu Zhijun said that now we are mainly doing two aspects of work: First, work together with the industry to define what 6G is. What? A 6G white paper may be released soon; second, do some basic research and research on cutting-edge technologies around the definition of 6G.
Xu Zhijun believes that if 6G application scenarios cannot be found, then 6G may not be needed. If 5G or 5.5G can help realize the scenarios and applications that can be imagined, then 6G is not needed.
Generally speaking, Xu Zhijun believes, “We are looking forward to 6G, but we don’t necessarily have 6G. But we still have to prepare, do research, and invest in the possible arrival of 6G.”
You must log in to post a comment.