Meng Wanzhou, rotating Chairwoman of Huawei Technologies, said the company will implement a new “all intelligence” strategy to transform itself into a key provider of computing power to support China’s artificial intelligence (AI) development. While Meng did not talk about specific products in her speech at the Huawei Connect Summit in Shanghai, the heir-apparent of the company founded by her father Ren Zhengfei stressed that it aimed to contribute to China’s technological progress as a key infrastructure provider to accelerate the “intelligent transformation” of traditional industries. Huawei will offer “an alternative choice for the world”, Meng said, without elaborating.
The once-in-a-decade strategic upgrade, an evolution from the “all cloud” strategy announced in 2013 and the “all IP” strategy from 2003, was widely reported by local media. The company’s latest Mate 60 Pro smartphone, which contains an advanced chip capable of achieving 5G speed despite U.S. sanctions, has fanned nationalist sentiment and renewed attention on the Shenzhen-based company. Washington added Huawei to a trade blacklist in May 2019 and tightened export curbs in 2020 to cover semiconductors developed or produced anywhere using U.S. technology. Those restrictions sent Huawei’s once-lucrative smartphone business tumbling and forced the company to turn to new revenue streams, including cloud computing and other enterprise-facing businesses.
Huawei has also increased its focus on industrial clients. The three-day Huawei Connect event featured applications of the company’s technologies in a variety of industries from manufacturing to healthcare and finance. Meng said Huawei would build a computing power base to meet the diverse AI needs of different industries. She also said Huawei supports organizations and industries in using their data and specialized knowledge to develop large language models (LLMs). Meng’s high-profile public speech, her latest after taking up a six-month tenure as the company’s rotating Chairwoman in April, indicates that the privately-held firm is determined to expand its presence in its home market, the South China Morning Post reports.
Meng also said that Huawei has established information communications technology “colleges” in collaboration with over 2,600 universities worldwide. The “colleges” train 200,000 students annually. The company has collaborated with 72 universities in China to continuously upgrade its training projects for talented people. A report from consultancy KPMG states that by 2025, the annual revenue of China’s core computing power industry is expected to be at least CNY4.4 trillion, up from CNY1.8 trillion last year, and that of computing power-related industries could reach CNY24 trillion.
Computing power is expected to rise as another ‘super’ sector in China’s digital economy, following electronic information manufacturing and software. China’s total computing power has reached 197 EFLOPS, placing the nation second globally behind the United States, the China Daily adds.
