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A man wearing a face mask to protect against the coronavirus walks past a billboard advertising Huawei Technologies at the PT Expo in Beijing on October 14. Photo: AP
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Huawei’s global VP of communications, Irishman Joe Kelly dies – Irish Times reports

  • Kelly, who lived in Shenzhen where Huawei is headquartered, joined the company in late 2012 and was its global vice-president of corporate communications
  • He previously held similar roles for a number of other companies, including BT, Marconi and Xerox
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SCMP Reporter
SCMP Reporter
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Irishman Joe Kelly, who spent the last eight years leading communications for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies, has died at the age of 55, according to a report on Monday by the The Irish Times, citing an unnamed company colleague.

A Huawei spokeswoman on Tuesday later confirmed Kelly’s death, but declined to comment further.

Kelly, who lived in the southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen, where Huawei is headquartered, joined the company in late 2012 and was its global vice-president of corporate communications, according to The Irish Times report.

Before this he held similar roles for a number of other companies, including BT, Marconi and Xerox. He also previously worked as a journalist covering business and technology for a number of publications.

Joe Kelly discusses the features of Huawei Technologies’ 5G base station in a show room at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen on May 29, 2019. Photo: Reuters
Huawei, which surpassed Samsung Electronics for the first time in global smartphone shipments in the second quarter, has been one of the major casualties of rising US-China tensions. The company, which was added to the US government’s trade blacklist in May last year, is now struggling with tighter restrictions imposed this year, covering access to chips developed or produced using US technology, from anywhere.

From Letterkenny, Co Donegal, Kelly found himself at the forefront of Huawei’s campaign to fight off US claims that its technology could be used for spying purposes.

“My speciality is crisis management. When things happen, stay calm, don’t get emotional,” he said in an interview with The Irish Times last year. “Nobody wants to be in the middle of a non-story. I don’t remember a time when I was happier.”

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