Where Is Huawei Going? Xu Zhijun Explains Five Strategic Plans In Detail

"Huawei's 2021 is still a year full of challenges. Last year, we mainly dealt with multiple rounds of sanctions. This year, we should focus on studying where to go in the future. Our goal is to survive. This year we will have time to think about how to survive better. " On April 12, Xu Zhijun, Huawei's rotating chairman, said at an analyst conference.

At the press conference of the 2019 annual report, Xu Zhijun once said: "2020 is the most difficult year for Huawei." Indeed, in the past year, Huawei has not only survived completely under the list of entities in the United States, but also experienced two "upgrades" of export control. The United States has directly and explicitly restricted Huawei's global supply chain, coupled with the global epidemic challenge, Huawei is facing great pressure.

At present, the United States is still pressing on the technology field step by step, and the outside world is more concerned about Huawei's future planning.

At the conference on April 12, Xu Zhijun introduced Huawei's five strategic measures for the future: optimizing industrial mix, enhancing industrial resilience, especially enhancing software capability, strengthening investment in weak related industries of advanced technology and intelligent auto parts industry; promoting the full play of 5g value, defining 5.5G, and driving 5g's continuous evolution; creating seamless wisdom in the whole scene with the user as the center Experience; reduce energy consumption and realize low-carbon society through technological innovation; strive to solve supply continuity.

It can be seen that after the terminal was impacted, Huawei is trying to expand new business, and cloud, intelligent car and Internet of things have become new investment objects. Whether these new businesses can rapidly expand the scale is closely related to Huawei's next development.

Behind Huawei's cloud change: increase the proportion of software revenue

Back to Huawei's own changes, the recent adjustment of Huawei's cloud business has become an important measure for the implementation of its strategy. On April 9, Huawei announced the latest personnel adjustment of Huawei cloud internally: Xu Zhijun, the rotating chairman of Huawei, was appointed chairman of Huawei cloud; Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei consumer BG, was appointed CEO of Huawei cloud; at the same time, two new deputy directors of cloud Bu, Peng Zhongyang and Tao Jingwen, were respectively responsible for enterprise business and process it. Previously, Huawei has cancelled cloud and computing BG, renamed "cloud bu", and appointed Zhang Ping An as the president of cloud bu.

As for changes, Xu Zhijun said, in 2021, Huawei faced with the United States sanctions against Huawei, repeated epidemic situation, and geopolitical uncertainty. For Huawei, industrial resilience is the guiding principle of priority. Since last year, Huawei has been optimizing its industrial mix.

Among them, one of the most important aspects is to strengthen software capabilities. Xu Zhijun said: "at the end of 2018, the board of directors adopted a decision to invest US $2 billion to improve software capabilities. In the five-year cycle, software engineering capabilities will be further improved. Through software upgrading, we can reduce dependence on chips and create differentiation. We are also looking at software opportunities, increasing investment, and improving the revenue share of software and services. The recent adjustment of Huawei's cloud business is also strengthening the organization of software, so that it does not have too much involvement with hardware, so as to realize the growth of software. "

Cloud computing is the direction that technology companies must grasp, and it is also one of Huawei's important strategic directions. However, when Huawei started its cloud business, its competitors were already sitting on the table. How much share could Huawei grab as a giant? According to the report on China's public cloud service market (Q4 2020) released by canalys in March 2021, Huawei cloud ranks second in China with 17.4% market share.

In terms of the global market, Amazon AWS, Microsoft azure, Google cloud and Alibaba cloud occupy the top four positions in the public cloud market. Among them, Amazon can be called an all-round player, with relatively perfect infrastructure, supporting applications and services; Microsoft has moved its own rich applications to the cloud; Google has its own characteristics in algorithms and intelligent cloud services; Alibaba cloud is the top three in the world, and has occupied many small and medium-sized customers in the domestic market.

The global public cloud market continues to grow rapidly. Forrester predicts that the public cloud infrastructure market will grow by 35% to $120 billion in 2021. We can see that the cloud computing market is very large, while Huawei's competitors are very strong.

A cloud computing practitioner told the 21st century economic report: "the more critical point is that Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba and Google are big customers of the cloud. E-commerce, various app applications and other Internet businesses need to be based on the cloud. Huawei itself needs it, but the demand in the past is not strong. Because hardware companies mainly sell hardware to make money, they don't need cloud. For example, apple doesn't do cloud. It has to be said that the development of cloud business is really related to genes. The cloud world is an open source world, and one of its essence is open source sharing. Huawei itself is a hardware company. In the process of entering the software world, Huawei is facing challenges. "

In a sense, Huawei cloud is another Huawei mobile phone. If there is no chip, there will be no Huawei mobile phone. Hisilicon provides differentiated competitiveness for Huawei mobile phones. Without chips, there is no Huawei cloud. Of course, Intel can supply Huawei with server chips. However, Huawei's original plan is to push Kunpeng and shengteng chips to build its own cloud chips To form the advantages of software and hardware integration.

However, unfortunately, the US sanctions have disrupted the original rhythm. At the same time, the integration of Huawei cloud BG and computer services is not good enough. A number of Huawei insiders told the 21st century economic report that Huawei cloud has been subject to a lot of internal disputes, and the industry is facing fierce competition. After the merger, there are also many contradictions between cloud BG and enterprise BG. Now, Huawei's cloud and hardware computing related services are separated and developed separately.

When the international environment is calm, Huawei can support the input of cloud services. In addition to the traditional b-end business, the terminal is a huge engine, which not only provides new revenue and profit sources, but also provides service scenarios for Huawei cloud, especially the Hongmeng operating system and HMS mobile service which are accelerating the development. In the original space, Huawei can plan for another 10 years, but now the terminal engine in front of it is blocked, and the cloud in the latter side still needs to be maintained. As we all know, cloud business has always been a money burning department and has high requirements for infrastructure construction. Tencent and Alibaba have invested 100 billion yuan to build data centers. The cloud business needs to be supported, but Huawei is in urgent need of revenue and profit.

Continue to invest in auto track and explore "Huawei inside"

In addition to Huawei's cloud business, intelligent car Bu has become an important part of Huawei's organizational structure. In 2020, the auto Bu and consumer BG will be integrated.

At the analysts' meeting, Xu Zhijun also highlighted Huawei's emphasis on the auto track. Huawei believes that the automobile industry is one of the most disruptive industries in the next decade.

"Huawei will increase its investment in automatic driving, promote the intelligence and networking of the automobile industry, and bring long-term strategic opportunities for Huawei." Xu Zhijun told reporters, including the 21st century economic report, that Huawei is also investing in auto parts, especially auto driving software, to promote intelligent and networked vehicles, and to help car companies build good cars. "Recently, Yu Chengdong is still actively cooperating with car manufacturers to see how to help car companies sell cars."

At the same time, Xu Zhijun again responded to the topic of whether Huawei built cars. Xu Zhijun said that at present, Huawei mainly cooperates with three automobile enterprise partners to create three new automobile sub brands, namely BAIC, Chongqing Chang'an and GAC. Vehicles based on Huawei's ICT capability will be launched in the fourth quarter of this year.

In the near future, Beiqi will launch a large and medium-sized car called alpha s, which will carry Huawei's ICT technology solutions. However, the brand names of Changan and GAC have not been determined yet. Among them, GAC's L4 class automatic driving vehicle is planned to be launched only in 2024.

He also said that Huawei will not cooperate with many brands, and smart cars marked with "Huawei inside" logo will be launched in the fourth quarter of this year. "We designed the brand of 'Huawei inside'. When you see the brand on this car, you will know that Huawei is involved. Not all cooperative vehicles will have this logo. Only vehicles that use Huawei's automatic driving technology will have this logo. "

Xu Zhijun also once again stressed Huawei's role as an automobile supplier. Huawei does not make cars. He explained: "Huawei made this decision after years of discussion. Before 2012, the Internet of vehicles laboratory was set up under the 2012 laboratory. At that time, there was no concept of intelligent car, only the concept of electric vehicle. With the deepening of research, from electric vehicle to automatic driving vehicle, great changes have taken place in the automotive industry, especially artificial intelligence vehicles After that, it changed a lot. It turns out that we do three electric systems, and then we find that we want to be drivers. "

In the past few years, he has had in-depth exchanges with the chairman of almost all automobile manufacturers and learned that the automotive industry needs ICT technology more than Huawei brand cars. "So in 2018, we decided not to build cars, only to empower the automobile industry, and this decision will not change until now. Although we don't build cars, Huawei also wants to cooperate with car companies to create some good business models. We will choose to cooperate with them in depth and empower them through Huawei inside, so as to truly face our cars to the future. "

He also revealed that the intelligent car Bu has complete capabilities, including sales and delivery systems. "This year, the investment in research and development of smart car parts has exceeded US $1 billion. If the annual revenue of each vehicle is 10000 yuan, it will be enough for us. Now every part of our car has been gradually put into the market, more and more cars are in use. Huawei's inside cars will be intensively presented at the next Shanghai auto show, which can provide an automatic driving experience. "

How Huawei competes and cooperates with Bosch and other old automobile suppliers and autonomous driving enterprises will be the focus of the future.

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