Huawei is one of the largest consumer electronics brands in the world, and everyone knows it but you probably don’t know that making phones is not its only business. It makes laptops, tablets, smartwatches, smart home products, and a lot of other stuff. The company’s bread and butter, though, is its networking business, and Huawei…
Huawei is one of the largest consumer electronics brands in the world, and everyone knows it but you probably don’t know that making phones is not its only business. It makes laptops, tablets, smartwatches, smart home products, and a lot of other stuff. The company’s bread and butter, though, is its networking business, and Huawei is really good at it.
The company was started by Ren Zhengfei in 1987 in Shenzhen, also known as the Silicon Valley of China, with a declared capital of just RMB 21,000 (that’s around INR 2,19,000). It all started with phone switches, and over the past 31 years, the company has grown into one of the largest telecommunication brands in the world in spite of being shut out of the US. Huawei’s journey from a small firm to where it is now is nothing short of impressive. The company ranks 72nd among Fortune 500 companies for 2018 and 79th in Forbes’ list for 2018.
Everyone knows that Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi sell a lot of phones, but did you know that Huawei is actually the second-largest smartphone maker in the world (it’s getting close to selling 200 million units by the end of 2018). It is on its way to becoming the largest in the segment by Q4 next year, selling more smartphones than Samsung. Surprised, are you? Well, Let me take you through ten other things you probably didn’t know about Huawei.
As I mentioned earlier, Huawei bread and butter lies in its telecom equipment business. It has a presence in over 170 countries and it has worked with over 80 percent of the top 50 telecom companies in the world. No wonder it is the largest telecom infrastructure provider in the world. In fact, Huawei’s revenue from its telecommunications network infrastructure revenue is higher than its consumer business, which includes smartphone sales.
Huawei is a combination of two Chinese words: Hua and Wei. Hua translates to Splendid or China, and Wei generally translates to Action or Achievement.