Chapter 17 Chapter 5 Towards a beautiful blueprint: "I want three parts of the world"

At the beginning of the 20th century, the colonies in the world had been divided up. Germany was a latecomer and did not get much share.German Foreign Minister Pilov said angrily: "Let other countries divide the continent and the sea, and the era when we Germany are satisfied with the blue sky is over, and we also demand the territory under the sun." After years of hard work, Huawei is not satisfied with the "blue sky" and "strives for the territory under the sun", and is truly moving towards a world-class enterprise.Huawei is high-spirited and determined to carry out a "hair removal operation" like a lamb, get rid of the old disadvantages, constantly appear with a new image, and move forward on the road of internationalization with its head held high. Become the Huawei of the world.

In 2006, Huawei's sales were US$8.45 billion (approximately RMB 65.6 billion), and overseas sales exceeded 65%. "There will be times when the wind and the waves cleave, and we hang our sails on the clouds to help the sea." After eight years of struggle, this goal is getting closer and closer.Stepping into the world, Huawei demonstrates the grandeur of China, and has increasingly become a "Chinese force" that cannot be underestimated.It stands at the forefront and tells the world: Chinese companies are rising. The countryside surrounds the city, and eventually the city must be captured.After establishing a base in the countryside and gaining a firm foothold, it is necessary to launch an attack on the city.After a long period of careful preparation, Huawei finally launched a "general attack" on the "city".

In 1996, Huawei opened up its first overseas stop in Hong Kong, and cooperated with Hutchison, a subsidiary of Li Ka-shing Cheung Kong Holdings Group. Taking advantage of price advantages and flexible business services, Huawei has achieved certain results and accumulated some international experience.Immediately afterwards, Huawei stepped up the pace of overseas expansion, marching into Russia and South America. Since 2000, Huawei has stationed personnel overseas on a large scale, and gradually transferred its marketing backbone overseas.Ding Shaohua, former general manager of the North China region and representative of the Beijing office, was sent to Saudi Arabia, Xu Zhan, the former representative of the Guangzhou representative office, was sent to the United States, and Cao Songjie, the former general manager of the marketing department of Xinwang, was sent to South Africa...

In 2001, Huawei gradually established overseas sales organizations.When expanding to the CIS, Singapore, Malaysia and other Southeast Asian markets, as well as developing countries such as Africa, the Middle East, and South America, the past experience can still be used, but it will not work when it comes to the developed countries. As early as the beginning of 2001, Ren Zhengfei warned the people of Huawei: "Our guerrilla style has not faded, and the international management style has not yet been established, the professional level of employees is still very low, and we are not yet equipped to gallop in the international market. We found problems as soon as our sailboat sailed out of the ocean. We are far less experienced in international work than Lucent, Motorola, Alcatel, Nokia, Cisco, and Ericsson. We should learn from our competitors abroad and use them as our teacher."

Huawei has started a difficult "hair removal".It actively learns from the West, not only realizes the market, manufacturing, R & D and international standards, but also gradually realizes the internationalization of management level and capital operation. After arduous efforts, Huawei's internationalization has made great progress.Huawei signed 3G patent licensing agreements with internationally renowned companies such as Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Nokia, and established joint ventures with NEC, Panasonic, Siemens, and Symantec.Huawei has gradually won the favor of the "giants" and gained a firm foothold in the "city".

After turning to "cities", Huawei's status has been improving year by year. In 2005, it entered the top 10 for the first time, ranking eighth among global telecom equipment suppliers. In the 1980s, Chinese enterprises had just started and could not compete with the "century-old" Western enterprises at all. They could only survive in the cracks, relying on China's cheap labor force, and gradually gained a firm foothold at low prices.This is the need to survive. At the beginning of its establishment, Huawei also took such a path.Ren Zhengfei judged the situation and established the circumstances under which to fight a price war.The principles he established for Huawei are: "There is no obvious difference in products, customer relationships, and brands, and the market is weak; reduce the profits of competitors and kill the growth of 'weeds'; concentrate resources and invest limited financial resources in valuable markets; Innovation or change, forcing the industry to progress through self-elimination, etc. It is not the best choice to simply attack the opponent, but to establish a lasting advantage through competition and try to avoid the destructiveness of competition is the best policy.”

On their own territory, draw the ground as a prison, use defense as an offense, firmly grasp the existing market, and make it difficult for "enemies" to fly.Prevent new competitors from entering, and use product portfolio advantages to block opponents' offensive opportunities.On the opponent's territory, attack violently, do everything possible to launch a price war, use all means to hit the opponent's profit and sales targets, hinder its market progress, gradually occupy space, and finally replace it. Now in China, the price war is in full swing, and major manufacturers have played "price cards" one after another, desperately lowering prices and slandering each other. own strength.The vicious price war between Huawei and ZTE, the two major enemies, has brought about a serious loss of vitality for both parties.

Price wars are equivalent to suicide weapons, which can bring down companies with weak capital chains; and low prices will always give people the impression of poor quality, which is also very detrimental to the company's image.With the in-depth development of Huawei's internationalization, European and American markets, which are not sensitive to prices, pay more attention to quality and service.Huawei's previous methods have been caught up by its peers, and the continuation of the price war will pose a serious threat to the survival of the company. Huawei has played triumphant songs all the way overseas, and realized that playing the price card is not a long-term solution for enterprise development. Ren Zhengfei proposed to learn from Shanxi merchants, and no longer play the price card overseas.More than 100 years ago, Qiao Zhiyong, a representative of Shanxi merchants, established China's No. 1 bank and connected the world with righteousness as the foundation and faith in the world. In 2006, when Ren Zhengfei inspected the European market, he gave a lecture to the employees of Shanxi Merchants: "Why is Risheng Prosperous? Be moral and honest!" To remind overseas employees to remember "customer-oriented, honesty-based".

Now, Huawei's competitiveness is not low prices. "For the 3G projects in Malaysia, the Netherlands and other international markets, we won the bids and the prices were not the lowest," said Deng Tao, senior vice president of Huawei. "Let go when you have to let go." Ren Zhengfei took the initiative to give up the price tag, and instead focused on quality and reputation, which accelerated Huawei's pace of expanding overseas markets.Huawei has also gradually shed its image as a second-rate product and is preparing for a new international image. A logo shift marks a change in corporate image and strategy. In 2001, Lenovo established the strategic goal of "high-tech services, internationalization", trying to change the previous image of "science, industry and trade".After two years of adjustments, in 2003, Lenovo took the opportunity of launching the new logo "lenovo" and launched a brand reconstruction campaign, successfully reshaping the corporate image.

Just after the "May 1st" Golden Week in 2006, Huawei changed its appearance and replaced the company logo that had been used for 18 years.The biggest difference between this new logo and the original one is that the English font of HUAWEI has been adjusted to be more in line with the graphic LOGO standard; the "shell" that symbolizes Huawei has been changed into the shape of a chrysanthemum—the original 15 are like "the sun rises" The emitted beam of light turned into 8 beautiful petals.Compared with the old trademark, the new LOGO is fuller and full of vitality.

The previous "HUAWEI" logo was a well-known trademark in China, but it was still a regional symbol, giving people the impression that it was a Chinese product with low prices and no guarantee of quality.Another impression of Huawei is that the wolf is aggressive and murderous, and people are wary wherever they go.Over the years, Huawei has not gone smoothly on the road to internationalization. The Cisco case, the India incident, and the Bangladesh and Sri Lanka bribery cases have damaged Huawei's international image.Entering a new era of overseas development, these images of Huawei need to be changed.Huawei urgently needs to change its "cheap" and "aggressive" international image, bid farewell to the "coyote" era, and build a global brand. Huawei's rebranding is not only an important step in its internationalization strategy, but also the key to establishing its brand image. "The new logo is more focused, innovative, stable, and harmonious on the basis of keeping the original logo vigorous and aggressive, and expresses Huawei's solemn commitment to customers." This change of logo is to establish a new image of Huawei International, Let more people in the world know Huawei, understand Huawei, and let more international users accept Huawei. At present, Huawei has initially become an international company and is in the stage of becoming a multinational company.Dilute the local color, reshape the corporate culture in the context of internationalization, and the new LOGO is released in time to make it even better. China is rich in opportunists, just like many people in the stock market have a "gamble" mentality and lack the attitude of doing things in a down-to-earth manner.However, in order to gain a firm foothold in the overseas market, it is difficult to achieve without real skills. Huawei is running on the road of internationalization. Ren Zhengfei said: "Overseas markets reject opportunism."After several years of exploration, Huawei found that even in the markets of developing countries, the process of brand building is quite long, not to mention the difficulty in developed markets such as Europe and the United States.The process of building a brand is difficult. Huawei has a deep understanding of this and is also prepared for hardships. Huawei's "Overseas Adventures" is very legendary. It didn't go well at the beginning, and it kept running into walls, and it once stagnated.At that time, as long as I heard that a telecom operator in a certain country had a project bidding, Huawei people would go to bid, but there were fewer wins and more losses.Until 1999, Huawei's overseas revenue was less than 4% of its total turnover, but it did not give up. The development of overseas markets is difficult, but Ren Zhengfei is not discouraged. He knows that relying on opportunism and cleverness will not open up overseas markets. To enter the ranks of suppliers of established European telecom operators, the threshold is extremely high.Western companies generally divide suppliers into four categories: ordinary bidders, suppliers, strategic suppliers, and strategic partners.Suppliers at different levels have metrics to assess the quality of the relationship. Huawei has entered the ranks of British telecommunications suppliers not relying on speculation but relying on strength. In 2004, when talking about the joint development project between British Telecom and Huawei, Levy, chief technology officer of British Telecom Group, said: "The resources we face are quite attractive, and it is absolutely sinful to turn a blind eye to them." In 2000, Huawei people came to Thailand and wanted to sell their GSM related equipment, but they came too late, and the "big fish" had already been caught by others, so they could only envy them.But they were not disappointed and were actively looking for vacancies.It was later discovered that although AIS, the mobile operator in Thailand at the time, had 1.8 million users, DTAC, the second largest operator, followed closely behind. The competition became fiercer, and new services were needed to stimulate the growth of the number of users. Therefore, Huawei people started from the experimental bureau, persuaded AIS to invest in intelligent network construction, and established a website for it within 45 days. Five months later, AIS recovered its investment, and trust began to be initially established.Due to the rapid increase in the number of users, the network needs to be expanded every few months. With the help of Huawei, AIS has achieved a snowball-like development.Moreover, they also combined with the local tourism industry to open a "small betting" gaming business. In three years, the number of AIS users has increased to more than 12 million.In this process, the trust between the two parties has been continuously upgraded.Starting from AIS, Huawei has also established cooperation with other telecom operators in Thailand. In January 2005, Huawei undertook the construction of a CDMA mobile communication network project in Thailand, with a contract value of 7.2 billion baht (about 186 million US dollars).Through superb technology and solid efforts, Huawei has finally gained a firm foothold in Thailand. With the continuous expansion of Huawei's overseas market, the competition with multinational companies has become increasingly fierce.To compete with multinational companies, Huawei's strategy is to show its own advantages.Huawei's advantage lies in its cost-effective products and quick response to customer needs. In the French LDCOM company's construction of the DWDM national trunk transmission network project, some international giants competed with Huawei at that time, but Huawei saved LDCOM company 35% of the investment in the first phase of the project. 50% of the investment can be saved after completion, but the product is not inferior to any competitor's product in terms of technology and quality, and this advantage immediately impressed LDCOM. In the overseas market, Ren Zhengfei resolutely abandoned opportunism, relied on excellent technology and strength to win the recognition of the "giants", and quickly opened up the situation. In China, the fierce "price war" among merchants is becoming increasingly intensified; in the international market, it is not the low price, but the brand and strength.After the primitive accumulation of capital, this model should be changed.Although low prices may succeed temporarily, it is not a long-term solution. Ren Zhengfei is deeply aware of this, "In terms of overseas market expansion,... we must use our own efforts to obtain customer recognition by providing high-quality products and services, and we must not damage the entire company because of our little sales. For the profit of the industry, we must not be a disruptor of market rules. The communication industry is an investment market, and it is impossible to be accepted by customers only by short-term opportunistic behavior. Therefore, we reject opportunism, insist on targeting the target market, and persevere We will continue to expand the market and strengthen our marketing network, service network and team building from beginning to end." In the ever-changing international situation, weak countries have no diplomacy.In the international market, the weak are also preyed upon by the strong. The strong rely on their strong strength to control the weak. If they want not to be eaten away by the strong, they must become strong. This is the "law of the jungle" for corporate survival.The strong must rely on strength to speak.Ren Zhengfei is very clear that in order to gain a firm foothold in the international market, it is absolutely impossible to have no strength. British Telecom's bidding conditions are very harsh, but Huawei relies on strong strength as a backing, which has won the admiration of British Telecom experts. Matt Bross, CTO of British Telecom, said at an international conference: "If you don't choose Huawei, you will was a mistake." At the end of December 2003, Huawei signed a switching product contract worth more than US$20 million with Ethiopian Telecom to transform and optimize ETC's existing switching network.At that time, nine suppliers participated in the bidding, and Huawei provided the most complete solution. In 2002, Huawei participated in the project bidding of Sunday, a mobile operator with a 3G license in Hong Kong.There are 8 international companies bidding for this project.The first pilot site is Causeway Bay in Hong Kong, where the terrain is extremely complex and the environment is the most chaotic.There are 250,000 people living in one square kilometer, and there are dotted with high-rise buildings.Huawei's 3G test phone performed very well in this area, with high signal quality.After nearly a year of testing, Huawei beat out peers such as ZTE, Ericsson, Siemens and Alcatel. On December 18, 2003, Huawei won the bid, signed a US$100 million order with Sunday, and became Sunday's exclusive supplier. The UAE WCDMA bidding, a total of five manufacturers compete.Everyone put the equipment there for testing for a year.On R4, everyone stands on the "same starting line", but Huawei people are more diligent. They used this year to take the lead in perfecting their own R4 products.So the final test result is that Huawei products have the best performance, and Huawei wins. 3Com's CEO Bruce Claflin praised Huawei and said: "It's a bit mysterious, it's really amazing. People always think that China is a low-tech, low-cost place. But the first impression tells me that Huawei is a great technology company. "Heavy Reading, a well-known consulting agency, also commented: "A dark horse in the competition, constantly expanding product lines, strong technical force, and rapid growth in the global market." In the competition with international giants, "strength is king".Ren Zhengfei has a strong mentality and leads Huawei to rely on its strong strength to continuously compete with international companies. This not only brings sufficient stamina to Huawei's development, but also takes a steady step for Huawei to become an international large enterprise. .