A spring conference, and the three Huawei behind it

Huawei's spring flagship new product launch. Photo by Zhang Sheng, reporter of Yangtze River Daily

"Spring is warm, and the future can be expected." On March 23, Huawei held its spring flagship new product launch event in Shanghai. At the first offline press conference in the post-epidemic era, Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of Device BG, and CEO of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, concluded the entire conference with this sentence.

Today, Huawei released more than ten products in one go. There are flagship mobile phones such as P60 series and Mate X3 series, as well as tablet computers, smart watches and other terminal products. It was also at this press conference that Yu Chengdong publicly said phrases such as "Huawei asks the boundary" for the first time, and the distance between Huawei and the automotive industry continues to arouse people's imagination.

In addition to this press conference, Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei revealed that Huawei's self-developed product research and development tools have occupied the hot search list for several days. From Huawei for consumers, to Huawei on the edge of car manufacturing, and then to Huawei in the breakthrough, in addition to the dazzling product releases, Huawei shows the multiple aspects of a behemoth in transformation.

Huawei's spring flagship new product launch. Photo by shell financial reporter Xu Xu

Huawei: High-end confidence is still there, and the price has made some consumers "persuaded"

The protagonist of today's conference is undoubtedly Huawei's latest flagship folding screen product Mate X3 series. When major domestic mobile phone manufacturers have entered the folding screen market and the price of mainstream flagship folding screens has entered within 10,000 yuan, the starting price of this model is still more than 10,000 yuan, which is 12,999 yuan.

Huawei releases the Mate X3. Photo by shell financial reporter Xu Xu

Huawei's pricing of the Mate X3 series comes from its many exclusive technological innovations and flagship configurations. In terms of weight, the weight of the Mate X3 plain leather model is controlled at 239g, which is even lower than the 240g of the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Both internal and external screens support 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, as well as full-color gamut and full-link color management. In terms of communication capabilities, the model also supports two-way Beidou satellite messages. In terms of image capabilities, it has periscope 5x optical zoom, which supports flash shooting and hover photography functions. In terms of intelligent interaction, split-screen experience and large-screen adaptation, the model has also been deeply optimized.

According to the latest report by market research agency IDC, in 2022, Huawei still ranked first in the market share of folding screen mobile phones in China, with a specific share of 47.4%, accounting for half of the country; Samsung ranked second with a market share of 16.5%; OPPO, vivo, honor, and Xiaomi ranked three to six. Huawei's dominance in the folding screen market is also one of the reasons why it dares to set a high price for the Mate X3 series. Although folding screen mobile phones are no longer scarce, Huawei folding screens still occupy a fairly strong position in the minds of users.

Another protagonist at the conference was the Huawei P60 series, which featured images and design. After last year's Mate50 series made its industry premiere with satellite communication functions, the P60 series debuted with two-way Beidou satellite messaging.

Huawei's spring flagship new product launch. Photo by shell financial reporter Xu Xu

In terms of image capabilities, the Huawei P60 series is equipped with Huawei's self-developed ultra-concentrated XMAGE imaging system, which brings a better low-light telephoto shooting experience through the system-level capability upgrade of opto-mechanical and electrical computing. In terms of color matching, in addition to the three colors of feather purple, feather black and jade cold emerald, a new "rococo white" scheme is also introduced. The solution uses the Condensation Fritillary process, hand-crafted, so as to achieve a different natural texture for each one. In addition, Huawei also launched the P60 Art series with irregular camera module for the first time.

However, the price of the P60 series somewhat surprised the audience at the press conference. When the starting price of 4488 yuan for the P60 standard version was announced, there was a lot of applause at the scene. When Yu Chengdong announced that the starting price of the P60 Pro was 6988 yuan, the applause at the scene was obviously much thinner. The starting price of the P60 Art has reached 8988 yuan. A "pollen" (Huawei fan) who was very excited about the appearance of the P60 Art said helplessly after seeing the price: "This price, I really can't afford it!" ”

Affected by external suppression, Huawei's terminal sales and revenue are well known. Under the premise of limited quantity, increasing the price of flagship products has become a natural choice for Huawei terminals. However, judging from the reaction inside and outside the conference, the high pricing of flagship products has also "dissuaded" some potential consumers to a certain extent.

Huawei at the edge of car manufacturing: Further bound to the Qianjie brand, high-end intelligent driving model was released in April

Compared with star products such as mobile phones, this time, AITO's car-related content did not have much "scene" at this conference. However, it is worth noting that after using the words "HUAWEI Question" on the poster, Yu Chengdong himself also directly used the expression "Huawei Question" at the press conference for the first time. This means that the Huawei brand is further bound to AITO.

Yu Chengdong. Photo by shell financial reporter Xu Xu

With environmental factors such as declining subsidies and sluggish consumption in the auto market showing their impact, auto companies have not had a good time lately. In addition to following Tesla's price cuts during the New Year, Yu Chengdong also tried to pull the AITO brand jointly designed by Huawei and Cialis through Huawei's brand power. However, this has also continued to cause speculation about "Huawei cars".

"We will not build Huawei-branded cars, AITO is a Huawei ecological car." In February this year, in an interview with a number of media outlets, Yu Chengdong was asked whether there will be a car with the Huawei logo in the future. He said.

"Huawei does not build cars", this is a statement that Huawei has reiterated countless times. However, in 2022, the Qianjie brand has sold 75,000 units, and the role played by Huawei's brand and technology in it is obvious to the industry. As Huawei's head of automobiles, Yu Chengdong has also frequently stood for HI (HUAWEI Inside) model cooperation models such as Avita 11.

This side box is Huawei's slogan of "not building cars"; Over there, cars of various brands with Huawei genes have been fighting in the increasingly crowded smart car track. Whether Huawei builds cars or not, Yu Chengdong cannot deny that Huawei has become one of the key "winners" in China's smart car market.

However, two facts that cannot be ignored are that Yu Chengdong once shouted a sales target of "300,000 vehicles", and the actual results are far from the same. In addition, neither Huawei nor Cialis have been able to earn profits from this mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation.

Huawei, which is on the edge of car manufacturing, shows no signs of slowing down in the automotive field. At today's press conference, Yu Chengdong announced that the high-end intelligent driving versions of Huawei's M5 and M5 EV vehicles will be released in April. He said that the two high-end intelligent driving versions released in April will bring an "unprecedented" intelligent driving experience, and announced that all models of the HarmonyOS 3 (the third generation of the Harmony system) will be upgraded to bring a better intelligent cockpit experience, so that the car will always be new.

Huawei in the breakthrough: 11 development tools were issued in a row, and the research and development expenditure last year was 164.4 billion yuan

In addition to the press conference, Huawei is being hotly discussed by the public in another dimension. Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said in a recently disclosed speech that Huawei is still in a difficult period, but it has not stopped on the road ahead. In 2022, Huawei's R&D expenditure was US$23.8 billion. (equivalent to about 164.4 billion yuan) is more than 20 billion yuan higher than the 142.7 billion yuan in 2021.

Ren Zhengfei also revealed that Huawei has completed the replacement development of more than 13,000 devices and the repeated replacement of more than 4,000 circuit boards in three years. Only now has Huawei's circuit boards stabilized, because there are domestic components available.

On March 21, Huawei's official forum Voice Community released a video on the "Breakthrough in Wujiang Tianli and Achieving Strategic Breakthrough - Product R&D Tool Stage Summary and Commendation Meeting" held by Huawei at Huawei's Bantian base in Shenzhen. The video shows that all Huawei executives, including founder Ren Zhengfei and vice chairman and rotating chairman Meng Wanzhou, attended the commendation meeting and presented awards and flags to the product development tool team.

Since December last year, Huawei has released 11 software and hardware development tools and services, and Huawei's own product line research and development has switched to these tools. The news that Huawei MetaERP will provide services has even led to a decline in the stock prices of traditional ERP manufacturers such as Yonyou and Kingdee. However, industry insiders pointed out that compared with application software, the underlying software and tools behind it are more far-reaching innovations.

For a long time, underlying software and tools, including operating systems, databases, and middleware, have been under the monopoly of Western manufacturers. According to Ren Zhengfei, Huawei has made its own management system MetaERP software completely using its own operating system, database, compiler and language.

It is understood that Huawei commended nearly 2,000 people who made outstanding contributions to product development tools, including employees of various systems and partners of Huawei. Xu Zhijun, Vice Chairman and Rotating Chairman of Huawei, said at the commendation meeting: "Xiongguan Mando is really like iron, and now we are stepping forward from the beginning. To create leading product development tools from sand, ore to products, completely get rid of the dependence on Western product development tools, break through the Wujiang natural danger, achieve strategic breakthrough slogans have been sounded, the battle flag has been awarded, let us live up to the mission, live up to Shaohua, and forge ahead. ”

In addition to specific industries, services, and markets, Huawei's underlying innovation capabilities and achievements have also attracted widespread attention from society. Under many aspects, there is also an opportunity for Huawei's next turnaround. At the end of this month, Huawei is about to release its 2022 annual report. Further information on its present and future will be further revealed.

Beijing News shell financial reporter promised

Edited by Xu Chao

Proofreading Lucie