Huawei’s founder offers 5G tech to US company to create ‘strong competitor’
- Telecoms gear maker Huawei’s revenue growth will be flat next year, but growth is expected to resume in 2021
Ren Zhengfei, the founder and chief executive of Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei Technologies, said he wants to license his company’s 5G technology to an American company to create a powerful new competitor that could develop its own large scale market.
In a meeting with media at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen on Thursday, Ren revealed that the purpose of sharing its technology in this way was to get Huawei and the US company to the same starting line to compete in 5G networks, adding that he was “confident that we are also going to win” in the ensuing competition.
“We are not worried about the emergence of a strong competitor,” said Ren. “I will be very happy if it [the competitor] can really challenge Huawei, helping us to become more efficient and eliminating underperforming areas of business and staff at Huawei.”
In that interview Ren revealed that Huawei was ready to share its 5G technology with potential western buyers in exchange for access to their markets. Further, the company would allow customers to modify the source code so that neither Huawei or the Chinese government could have any control over any telecoms infrastructure built using its equipment.