W24 - Is Huawei Technology-Driven?

I watched the HarmonyOS 2.0 launch last week and felt energized, as if its success were already assured. The line that stuck with me most was from Dr. Wang Chenglu: the broad point is that from feature phones to smartphones we achieved free combination of software, making phones powerful software terminals; from smartphones to HarmonyOS we achieve free combination of hardware, making HarmonyOS a powerful hardware terminal. Looking back at pioneers like Red Flag and Alibaba’s YunOS, HarmonyOS is undoubtedly a new-era hero that is both radical and specialized. It hits the window of a technological wave, has strong ecological pull, and a pragmatic global perspective—reason enough to be excited.

Huawei also has many leading technology products—Kunpeng, Kirin—practically every legendary beast you can name from myth has been developed. It’s easy to conclude Huawei is a technology-driven company. After reading various Huawei materials over the past months, I no longer see it that way. Mastering core science is possible, but technology is not the ultimate driving force. I’ve noticed that companies that loudly claim to be “technology-driven” rarely feel truly great; genuinely great companies don’t advertise themselves that way. For some firms, calling themselves “technology-driven” is just a slogan for the market.

You could say Huawei is driven by survival instinct, creativity, or vision, but not purely by technology—that label is misleading. Using a hammer to search for nails is the kind of behavior guided by “technology-driven” thinking. In reality, Huawei does not treat technology as its terminal engine; enduring success is the real problem it faces. Huawei began basic 5G research roughly a decade ago; moving proactively into uncharted territory aimed to break the industry’s 4G ceiling and create new growth. Back in 1999, when Huawei was still small, it hired IBM for corporate consulting—spending two billion yuan in the first phase, nearly a quarter of that year’s sales—and gained IPD and other management tools that served it for years.

Writer Guo Jianlong, who has long traveled through Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East, said in a speech that, from his experience, Huawei is the only Chinese brand that has truly gone global so far.