Huawei looks to cloud services in 2021 as US sanctions strangle smartphone business
- Firm’s founder Ren Zhengfei says the Chinese giant should learn from global leaders Amazon and Microsoft
- Staff told to focus on some aspects of cloud computing and scale back to survive rather than trying to follow US giants or Alibaba
With US sanctions putting a chokehold on Huawei Technologies Co’s 5G and smartphone businesses, company founder Ren Zhengfei said the Chinese tech giant must make cloud computing its priority.
In an internal speech delivered in November and shared on a staff forum two days before the new year, Ren admitted that cloud services had not been a strength and the firm needed to make a “breakthrough”.
“Our enterprise business needs to scale back its battlefront … If our strategy is too broad, we will lose our combat strength.”
New York-listed Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, and Amazon are both tech conglomerates whose vast businesses span e-commerce, video streaming and cloud computing among others. Huawei, on the other hand, has primarily focused on telecoms and smartphones.
