Huawei Now One of China’s Largest Software Companies

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Huawei Now One of China’s Largest Software Companies

	By Dave Burstein Editor, DSL Prime
	February 01, 2020 Views: 5,489 Comments: 1

The latest report from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) shows Huawei at the top of the list of 100 largest software companies in China. On reflection, that’s not surprising. Half of Huawei’s business is now phones, where chief rival Apple has long considered itself a software company.

The great achievement of Huawei’s phone division was to pull ahead of everyone in the quality of picture-taking. The hardware can be matched; Huawei’s advantage comes from software.

The Hong Meng/Harmony operating system is more than just an Android replacement. It’s already being used on TVs and IoT devices. Huawei’s Cloud division is among the fastest-growing, requiring a massive investment in software.

The key performance improvements in telco networks are likely to come from software, not hardware. Massive MIMO and more spectrum are currently the key drivers, but the performance of today’s wireless systems is again approaching Moore’s Law limits.

Reconfiguring beams and coordinating cell sites has enormous potential, which Huawei has demonstrated at trade shows. The location of mobile users shifts very rapidly as people head home from schools and offices at the end of the day. In urban areas, a telco can adjust the overlapping cells to match the traffic demand.

Ultimately, the likely goal is a “no cell” network, constantly reconfigured for maximum efficiency. Huawei is spending heavily on the necessary software.

By Dave Burstein, Editor, DSL Prime

Dave Burstein has edited DSL Prime and written about broadband and Internet TV for a decade.

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Comments

Employee owned! Joly MacFie – Feb 4, 2020 7:43 PM

I was interested recently to learn this about Huawei: “Even as Huawei has grown into a global player, its structure remained unusual among major Chinese companies. It is not publicly traded like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. Unlike ZTE, the other major Chinese telecom manufacturer, it does not have the state as its biggest shareholder. Instead, the company is employee-owned, with Ren holding just over 1 percent of its ownership shares. Some 96,000 employees and retirees own the remainder of the company. To make matters more complicated, legally the employees’ shares are owned by a Chinese worker trade union, which is registered with the Shenzhen city government’s union.” https://www.wired.com/story/us-feds-battle-against-huawei/

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