Ken Hu
Ken
Hu, Huawei rotating chairman, expressed confidence its founder’s
surprise offer to transfer access to its 5G technologies to a western
company has the potential to increase competition in a market with
only a few suppliers, after years of consolidation.
“If
it gets implemented, the move would support more competition across
the global supply chain which will be beneficial to consumers and
contribute to the development of the industry,” he argued.
Hu
said Ren Zhengfei’s proposal is not complex, noting that as 5G is
making rapid progress around the world, there is a growing debate
around the security of its 5G gear.
“You
can take a commercial approach to 5G if it’s under your control and
you can develop the technology. In that sense it will help alleviate
security concerns,” he explained.
He
reiterated the company’s insistence that the concerns are
groundless, and “based only on suspicion, doubts or guesses”.
Last
week, Ren revealed it would consider selling access
to
its 5G technologies to a company based outside Asia to ease concerns
about spying.
With
the first wave of 5G deployments only just underway in many
countries, Hu said Huawei will have to wait a while until 5G accounts
for a sizeable proportion of its carrier group’s business. “By
mid-2020, when the first rollouts in China will be completed, we’ll
have a clearer picture.”
Asked
about steps it is taking to mitigate the prospect of not running its
smartphone on Android, he didn’t offer specifics but said it is
“leveraging our cloud services and we continue to provide more tool
kits for developers”.
In
his keynote on computing in the age of intelligence, Hu said the
company plans to invest $1.5 billion over the next five years to
expand its developer community from 1.3 million to 5 million.
Indeed,
Huawei’s search for more developers is made urgent by the fact that
its new series of smartphones, to be launched tomorrow (19
September), will not have licensed access to Google’s apps.
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