Chapter 3 The "little people" who create nightmares for multinational giants

"It's all in the past, count the romantic figures, and look at the present." The unknown Huawei has suddenly emerged, and has become a "rising star" in the Chinese business community in one fell swoop.This "rising star" began to dominate the situation and became a "man of the hour" in the international business circle. From a small company with a registered capital of 20,000 yuan to a top 100 electronics company with sales of 22 billion yuan and a profit of 3 billion yuan, it has grown into a "leader" in China's communications industry in just over ten years.It is a miracle that Huawei has grown from an unknown small company to keep pace with the world's largest multinational companies in just a dozen years.

It is difficult to find Chinese companies in the field of second-generation mobile communication technology (2G), but in the field of third-generation mobile communication technology (3G), the era when multinational companies dominated has become a "glorious past", and new competitors have emerged "Bright sword". Huawei - "China Promising", has risen, and its sudden emergence has been called "the nightmare of the multinational telecommunications equipment giant". Personal mobile communication technology has gone through an era of technology update from analog to digital. In the 1980s, the development of the first generation of mobile communication technology based on analog technology was not mature enough. "Big Brother" was expensive and became a status symbol of that era.In the 1990s, the second-generation mobile communication technology based on digital technology developed greatly, and mobile phones entered the "homes of ordinary people".

Opportunities are everywhere, the key is whether you can seize them.The newly developed CDMA technology has not yet formed a monopoly of a few giants in the field of communication equipment manufacturing. Therefore, it provides a unified competition platform for major mobile communication equipment manufacturers at home and abroad, and also plays a "late-mover advantage" for China's communication manufacturing industry. "The conditions were created. "The edge of a sword comes from sharpening, and the fragrance of plum blossoms comes from the bitter cold." After years of "sharpening the sword", Huawei has seized the opportunity to build its own brand with great concentration, enjoying a world-class "dialogue right".

Huawei's unique technology has won the great attention of operators.Heavy Reading, a well-known research institution in the telecommunications industry, pointed out: "Western European operators are leaning towards Huawei", and the rise of Huawei will be "one of the most important forces that will change the structure of the telecommunications equipment supply market in the next five years." Hosting the Olympic Games is a big event. The bidding process is extremely cumbersome and strict, and the technical requirements are so high that ordinary equipment providers can't match it.However, Huawei was directly named by the organizer of the Olympic Games, which is a rare exception in the history of the Olympic Games. One day in February 2004, Huawei's headquarters suddenly received a call from the organizer of the Olympic Games, asking Huawei to provide a complete set of GSM equipment systems for the Athens Olympic Games, and immediately pay a large deposit.The procedure is so simple, immediately caused a sensation in the industry.

The annual "Pilgrimage to Mecca" is of a grand scale, and thousands of Muslims from all over the world flock to the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia every year to participate in the pilgrimage.During this period, the telecommunications system was overloaded and there were frequent interruptions, which was a big headache for Saudi Telecom. In 2006, Saudi Telecom used Huawei's large-capacity, high-processing capacity equipment to achieve normal network operation for the first time during the "Pilgrimage to Mecca". In 2007, the crowd of pilgrims was even larger. More than 3 million people gathered in the area of ​​10 square kilometers for collective pilgrimage. The frequency of switching and switching is even more frequent, and Huawei Wireless once again showed its talents to help Saudi Telecom successfully pass the busy period of Hajj.

After hard work, Huawei's wireless technology has rapidly expanded like a spark. Since 2003, Huawei has become the fastest-growing supplier in the global wireless field. In May 2005, it was named the "Asia-Pacific Best Wireless Equipment Supplier".By the end of 2006, Huawei had completed deployment in eight regions including Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North Africa, Commonwealth of Independent States, Latin America, South Africa, and North America, and formed "scale sales" in Eastern Europe, Commonwealth of Independent States, Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Entered the local mainstream operators."

In the past, we always looked up to the multinational giants and bowed at their feet. The emergence of Huawei's wireless technology has completely broken this tradition, and we have begun to stand up and look at them. With the rapid rise of computer technology, data services are growing rapidly.Huawei seized the rare opportunity, actively deployed, carried out technical research, gradually mastered the core technology, and won the initiative in the competition. Latif Ladd, chairman of the Global IPV6 Forum, clearly pointed out: "China will be the largest market for IPV6, and the key applications of IPV6 will be the first to appear in China."

IPV6 is a technical highlight in the data communication industry. In October 2003, the Chinese government announced the launch of the CNGI project, and plans to build the world's largest IPV6 network by the end of 2005.This will provide a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity for Chinese communication equipment manufacturers. To occupy the commanding heights of technology, the key is to have a strategic vision, but also to act quickly.Since 1992, Huawei has been keeping up with the latest development trend of the world's data communication technology, making every effort to develop digital program-controlled switches, striving to be one step ahead.

Over the years, the technical content and level of Huawei's communication products have been comparable to those of multinational giants. It has continuously made breakthroughs in some key areas representing the international mainstream technology level. Many products have not only reached similar international and domestic standards, but some key components have even reached high An order of magnitude higher than the standard, and some have filled the gap in China's communication technology. Huawei is ahead everywhere.It uses 3G technology to design the GSM system. This new-generation base station, which is injected with fresh design blood, effectively improves network performance and reduces network construction and operation costs. The softswitch core network based on R4 architecture supports all-IP networking. Capability of smooth evolution to 3G.This new digital trunking technology not only meets the needs of common network clusters, but also takes into account private network clusters, changing the world cluster pattern.

By the end of 2005, Huawei products and solutions had spread to 91 countries and regions, and had undertaken the construction of IP backbone networks in 49 countries including Brazil, China, Germany, Hungary, India, Romania, Russia, Spain, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom , becoming one of the major suppliers of high-end data communication equipment in the world. Products marked "Made in China" flood the global market, and we are "proud" of it.However, this only shows that China is the largest "processing factory" in the world, earning only processing fees, but the high profits are taken away by others.To some extent, "Made in China" has become synonymous with "poor quality, cheap price, and no technical content".At present, Chinese VCD manufacturers are experiencing "painful suffering". Because they do not have independent technical property rights and brands, 90% of the profits are taken away by others. In this way, those international giants are not greedy enough and try to swallow all the profits. If Chinese manufacturers do not agree, they will be accused of infringement.

Economic competition is to a large extent the competition of core technologies, and the degree of mastery of core technologies is related to the degree of economic independence of a country.Such a huge country rarely owns its own core technologies, especially in the fiercely competitive international telecommunications market, where the voices of Chinese companies are hardly heard, which is worrying.On the international stage, it is quite an embarrassing situation for a world power with a large population to be reduced to a processing workshop. China has chosen the European GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard as the technical standard for mobile communications, but cannot develop its own technology. Before 1997, 98% of China's mobile communications market was occupied by foreign telecom companies. Ren Zhengfei, a "tough guy" who never bows his head, with strong national pride and huge market pressure, led Huawei people to invest huge sums of money in research and development of Chinese people's own core technology. Repeated battles and repeated defeats, repeated defeats and repeated battles, more and more courageous battles, finally bear fruitful results.Huawei's GSM product R&D technology is fully mature, quickly entered the market, broke the monopoly of foreign technology, and proved to the world that Chinese people have the ability to master core technologies.Under his leadership, local Chinese companies began to stand up. "If you want to see a thousand miles, go to a higher level."Ren Zhengfei was not complacent in the face of victory, but became more energetic.He led Huawei people to continue to tackle key problems in order to achieve perfection.They also developed the GSM-R (GSM for Railway) technology for the Daqin Railway, and then the technology was promoted in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and other places.There are very few companies that can provide GSM-R technology on a global scale, and Huawei has been able to keep pace with giants such as Siemens and Nortel in this field. Some large companies in Europe, America, Japan, etc. that have been in contact with Huawei agree that Huawei leads the technological trend of China's communications industry, and Huawei should not be underestimated.Huawei's first-class technology, superb level, and strong core technology offensive have become a "rising star" in the communications industry, breaking the myth that Westerners think that China has no core technology, and changing the embarrassing image of "Made in China". up. Enterprises in the upper reaches of the value chain pay more attention to consulting services, and this is mainly reflected in the software level. IBM's goal is to be the chief architect of global IT construction, while Ericsson integrates the company's institutions and establishes an independent service department.Symantec (Symantec) relies on leading security and software storage technology to provide customers with first-class security and storage technology, and has become a global software giant in one fell swoop. Domestic telecommunications companies have not paid much attention to the strategic height of software, and are not used to paying for the software in hardware equipment separately, but Huawei's emphasis on software development is increasing day by day.In order to develop software, Ren Zhengfei "splashes money like water", investing 10% of sales in research and development every year, and 80% of this fund is invested in software. In order to better connect with the world, Huawei adopts the most popular and applicable software production engineering standards in the world.This standard is CMM (Capability Maturity Model for Software), that is, software maturity model. The process theory of CMM is to find the most convenient and accurate way to reach the goal in the complicated process. In order to improve the quality of R&D, Huawei reorganized its internal organization and actively searched for the best CMM environment. Finally, they aimed at India. In June 1999, Huawei established the India Research Institute in Bangalore, India's "Silicon Valley", to focus on software development as a pilot.They actively use India's advanced software development experience and continue to carry out technological innovation. In 2001, this institute first obtained the CMM4 international accreditation. In 2004, Huawei India Research Institute obtained the industry's highest level of CMM5 international certification, indicating that Huawei's software development has reached the world's first-class level.In the same year, Huawei's Beijing Research Institute and Nanjing Research Institute also successively passed the CMM4 international certification. Huawei's software development adopts international standards and is already in line with international standards, making this rising star in the communications industry stand proudly and join the international "club of giants".