In recent years, Huawei has ushered in unprecedented challenges. Whether it is the technology blockade in the West or the rapid change of digital transformation needs of thousands of industries, it has impacted the existing system of the established ICT giant with the highest intensity in history. Although the industry has a certain prejudgment of Huawei's anti-risk ability, Huawei's real performance has broken through the cognitive limits of many people.
According to the 2021 annual operating report released by Huawei at the end of March, Huawei's overall operation in 2021 was stable and in line with expectations, with sales revenue of 636.8 billion yuan for the whole year, net profit increasing by 75.9% year-on-year to 113.7 billion yuan, operating cash flow increasing significantly to 59.7 billion yuan, and reducing the asset-liability ratio to 57.8%. These data have surprised many people, marveling that Huawei has not only not been crushed by "blocking", but its ability to cope with uncertainty has been greatly improved.
As a result, a topic that has been repeatedly discussed by the outside world has once again become the focus of attention: Why can Huawei always break through many challenges and turn the crisis into a turning point? What exactly supports huawei's giant ship's voyage and enables it to gain a competitive advantage in the future?
On April 26, the 2022 Huawei Global Analyst Conference (HAS2022) was held as scheduled. With the above questions in mind, the author accessed the HAS2022 venue online and listened carefully to the sharing of executives and experts attending the meeting, among which the keynote speech of Hu Houkun, huawei's rotating chairman, let me find the answer to the question.
Continuous innovation, leading technological development and industrial change
The annual Huawei Global Analyst Conference is an important position for Huawei and global partners to discuss future technology development and industrial change, and many contents in the past have become the vane leading the development of the industry. The highlight of the first day of this year's conference was the grand attendance of Huawei's rotating chairman Hu Houkun and the delivery of a keynote speech entitled "Continuous Innovation, Building a Green and Intelligent World", sharing the secret of Huawei's continuous growth and building future competitiveness without reservation.
In Hu Houkun's view, continuous innovation is the core weapon for Huawei to maintain competitiveness and cope with all challenges. For Huawei, innovation is something that is imprinted on the bones of every Huawei person. Over the past decade, Huawei has invested more than RMB845 billion in R&D. Even in the case of slowing revenue growth, Huawei still continues to invest heavily in research and development. Taking 2021 as an example, Huawei is facing difficulties in operation due to a series of external challenges, but its investment in research and development has increased, from 10% of annual revenue ten years ago to 22% last year.
Continuous investment in innovation enables Huawei to continue to lead the industry in multiple fields such as connectivity, computing, cloud services, and terminals, and point out the direction for industrial evolution.
For example, at the level of connectivity innovation, Huawei took the lead in proposing and defining 5.5G in the field of wireless communications as early as two years ago, and has completed a number of key technological innovations and verifications of 5.5G so far. At the HAS2022 conference, Huawei also put forward the F5.5G industry vision for the fixed-line industry for the first time, increasing bandwidth, coverage, and experience by more than 10 times. Through the parallel progress of mobile and fixed networks, the connection cornerstone of the digital world will be made 1Gpbs ubiquitous, and ultimately the ultimate experience of 10Gbps everywhere will be realized.
For example, at the level of computing innovation, in the face of the current explosive growth of digital and intelligent transformation and upgrading of various industries on the demand for diversified computing power, the existing heterogeneous computing architecture is facing great challenges, Huawei is working with ecological partners to continue to innovate from the three levels of computing nodes, data centers, and software architectures, redefine the computing architecture, break through the computing bottleneck, and consolidate the computing productivity for high-quality economic and social development.
For example, at the level of cloud service innovation, Huawei adheres to the concept of "everything is service", integrating infrastructure as a service, technology as a service, and experience as a service to provide a better "Huawei solution" for enterprise digital transformation. In his sharing, Hu Houkun specifically mentioned the innovative practice of a digital content production line on the cloud called MetaStudio, which can move the whole process of film and television production to the cloud, and use the rendering resources of millions of cores to easily make super shocking scenes in blockbusters.
In addition, at the level of terminal innovation, Huawei has also spent great efforts to reconstruct and is committed to creating a full-scenario intelligent experience centered on people. For example, in the field of personal health management, Huawei has built the largest sports health science laboratory with an overall investment of more than 200 million yuan, released a medical-grade watch Huawei WATCHD that can monitor blood pressure, blood oxygen, electrocardiogram and other information, and worked with professional institutions and partners to provide comprehensive digital health services.
Deeply cultivate the industry digital intelligence, and provide services that exceed customer expectations
"Don't waste strategic resources on non-strategic opportunity points" is one of the fundamental principles written by Huawei in the Basic Law, and in the more than 30 years since its founding, Huawei has been deeply focused on its core business and has never deviated from the main channel. According to Hu Houkun, "continuously enabling the digitization and intelligence of thousands of industries" is Huawei's corporate mission from beginning to end, and it is also the source of Huawei's sustainable development.
This advantage is not only manifested in one or two specific products, but also covers the entire support and service system. Similar companies that have had a head-on confrontation with Huawei will have a strong feeling: Huawei's strongest is not his technology, but his strict combat system, so that customers exceed expectations. In terms of enabling the digitization and intelligence of thousands of industries, Huawei has built a 360-degree support system without dead ends. Judging from the evolution of Hu Houkun, this system has three major "measures".
The first major initiative is to adapt the product to more scenarios. Huawei has long been committed to keeping the trouble to itself and the convenience to customers and partners to better meet the different needs of thousands of industries. "Keep the trouble to yourself" is not a simple cliché, but a specific and detailed landing plan. In order to better serve customers, Huawei has developed countless product portfolio solutions, and in 2021 alone, Huawei has developed more than 20 product portfolio solutions based on industries such as coal and power, so that relevant customers can easily find solutions that suit them.
The second major initiative is to make it no longer difficult for customers to go to the cloud. As we all know, the cloud has become the key to the digitization of thousands of industries, and without a good cloud infrastructure, there will be no good digital system. In order to enable customers to better enjoy the cloud dividend, Huawei has created a unified cloud network covering more than 170 countries around the world, so that customers' business can quickly go to sea and reach the world. At the same time, Huawei also put forward the concept of "everything is service" to help customers solve the problem of "unwilling to go up, will not go up, and use it badly". In short, Huawei must not only build a good cloud, but also help customers use the cloud well.
The third major initiative, the operation of the legion, serves an industry well with one team. As we mentioned earlier, Huawei's biggest advantage is focus and professionalism. And to help customers better achieve digital transformation. Huawei has set up a separate "legion" specifically for serving the industry in response to the characteristics of different industries. The so-called legion is actually an integrated team. This team, not only sales, but also demand management, industry solution development, ecological cooperation and other departments, each team for a specific industry, in-depth understanding of customer needs, to provide customers with customized services. This practice can make the perfect combination of technology and business, truly achieve the urgency of customers, break the barrier between the two sides, and form a synergy.
In other words, as long as you cooperate with Huawei, customers are equivalent to having a high-level technical corps on standby for themselves. This is important because digital transformation is a systems project, not technology. Many times, technology doesn't solve the problem. Not using technology well and not knowing how to use technology is the norm, and Huawei focuses on solving these problems.
Adhere to green development and achieve commercial value in creating social value
In addition to innovation and focus, adhering to green development and taking the path of sustainable development are also the underlying logic of Huawei's sustained growth. Any technology, any industry, if not sustainable, will not go far. Huawei's ability to continue to lead the development of the industry is also inseparable from its long-term concept of adhering to green development and realizing commercial value in the process of creating social value.
First of all, on the energy side, huawei has been committed to building a green ICT infrastructure on the energy side for the past 30 years, continuously upgrading and optimizing existing technical systems and industry solutions through intelligent technology, and maximizing the use of renewable resources.
For example, in terms of site energy, Huawei uses an integrated outdoor cabinet in Indonesia to turn the site indoor to outdoor, go to the computer room, remove air conditioning, and reduce the energy consumption of supporting infrastructure by about 30%; in Poland, Huawei superimposes photovoltaics on the site, so that the solar power supply ratio is as high as about 30%. For example, in terms of data center energy consumption, Huawei has effectively responded to the increasingly prominent data center energy consumption challenges through innovative technologies such as full liquid cooling, AI management, prefabricated modules, and cluster computing.
Secondly, on the energy supply side, Huawei actively upgrades and feeds back energy supply through digital technology, builds a digital and intelligent new energy system with new energy as the main body, and promotes the development of renewable energy.
For example, in the photovoltaic field, Huawei's focus is to use digital technology to change the technical route of the photovoltaic industry, not only taking the lead in introducing the concept of wireless distributed base stations into the photovoltaic industry to improve power generation; also taking the lead in introducing wireless private network and power carrier technology into the photovoltaic field to save deployment costs; and also using cloud and AI technology to the operation and maintenance of photovoltaic power plants, greatly reducing operation and maintenance costs. For example, in the Gobi Desert in Qinghai, Huawei helped customers build the world's largest 2.2GW single photovoltaic power plant, and through the use of cloud and AI technology in photovoltaic power plants, the power generation increased by more than 2%, and the operation and maintenance efficiency increased by more than 50%.
In summary, continuous innovation, leading technological development and industrial change, deeply cultivating industry digitalization and intelligence, providing services that exceed customer expectations, and adhering to green development to achieve business value in creating social value - Huawei's long-term strong resistance to pressure and competitiveness may be hidden in these key points. Facing the future, we have reason to believe that under the two major wave of certainty trends of thousands of industries and intelligent and low-carbon development of human society, Huawei will surely bring us more surprises!