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Huawei presses for tech collaboration as US piles on pressure

By , Portals editor
Africa , 23 Sep 2020
Huawei Rotating Chairman Guo Ping.
Huawei Rotating Chairman Guo Ping.

While focussing on Huawei’s role in helping governments and businesses create new value across five tech domains, the company’s rotating Chairman, Guo Ping speaking at Huawei Connect 2020, is quoted by Reuters as saying the company would do all it could to strengthen its supply chain that was being “attacked”. According to Reuters, Ping did not provide details about the attack.

Huawei plans to work with partners in applying ICT technologies to industries, helping enterprises grow their businesses and helping governments achieve their strategic goals of boosting domestic industry, benefiting their constituents, and improving overall governance. The company has earmarked several business domains as key for investment, including networks, computing, cloud and AI.

In the network domain, Huawei has proposed the concept of intelligent connectivity, aiming to deliver a hyper-automated network that the company says offers ubiquitous gigabit access and a deterministic experience, and to enable intelligent upgrades of major business systems of governments and enterprises.

Then within the computing domain, Huawei says it is committed to providing diverse computing power to customers, decoupling software from hardware to adapt its compute to different processing needs, including x86 and Kunpeng.

Huawei added that in terms of cloud services, it has established 23 regions worldwide and attracted over 1.5 million developers.

The company also plans to better integrate AI into the major business systems of governments and enterprises, using know-how and data to build the core competency of AI systems.

“Connectivity, computing, cloud, and AI are a lot like electricity 100 years ago, whereas industry applications are like home appliances and industrial equipment powered by electricity,” the company stated.

Ping said: "Huawei will generate the power, and our partners can harness it. Together, we will succeed and create greater value for our customers."

The company is however facing pressure from the United States with increased restrictions imposed on the company’s commercially available chips.

Global media reports in May detailed how the US Commerce Department cited security concerns regarding an amended export rule that would effectively block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei. A CNBC report explained that the rule mandates foreign manufactures that use American equipment to secure a license before being able to supply semiconductors to Huawei.

In August media outlets outlined how US sanctions have impacted the availability of high-end chips for smartphones.

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