Interview with Huawei Founder
Bloomberg
On May 24, Bloomberg News interviewed Huawei Technologies Co. founder Ren Zhengfei at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen. The following excerpts, translated by Bloomberg, have been condensed and edited for clarity:
Bloomberg: President Trump has suggested that Huawei could be a factor in any trade deal between the US and China. How likely is that, do you think, from your perspective?
Ren: The U.S. has never bought products from us, so how can they negotiate with us? Even if the U.S. wants to buy our products in the future, I may not sell to them. There’s no need for a negotiation.
I will ignore Trump, then who can he negotiate with? If he calls me, I may not answer. But he doesn’t even have my number.
I see his tweets and think it’s laughable because they are self-contradictory.
Bloomberg: What were you ambitions for the company back in 1987?
Ren: I didn’t have any goals. At that time, we didn’t even have enough food. I clearly recall when my daughter was very little, her mother often told me that she needed to go to market at around 5 a.m. to buy stale fish and shrimp. The dead fish and shrimp were sold at a very cheap price in Guangdong. She cooked it for our daughter to provide protein. She said without enough protein, children cannot grow healthy. We could only maintain the minimum standard of living. So we did not have any goals. The goal was only to survive -- we didn’t even know whether we could survive. My most famous slogan at the company is "survive, survive and survive." Even today, when we are like a damaged airplane, our slogan is still to survive, rather than any great ambition.
Bloomberg: Did you ever image that you will be sitting here today in this position?
Ren: Actually if people don’t desire much, they can be more capable. I don’t desire much. As you can see, I don’t want to take too much money. I only hold a small portion of company shares. People say I’m rich, but back in 2000, I didn’t even own an apartment. The apartment I rented with my wife was only half the size of this room. It faced west and had no air-conditioner.
There was no turning back for us. If we went backwards, it would be poverty, if we went forward, it would be still poverty. But, if we kept going, there might be a slim chance of hope, while there was absolutely no hope if we went backwards. So we had to keep walking forward, walking and walking. All of sudden, we saw the sunshine, we suddenly realized we were at the top of the Himalayas.
...
Bloomberg: I just want to also bring it back to some of the original topics we talked about at the beginning around the supplies. We talked about how some of the major suppliers like Intel, like Qualcomm, like ARM, Panasonic and Google are restricting their supply of components and software to Huawei. Just explain to us how you weather that storm.
Ren: The U.S. manages its own companies, the U.S. is not the international police. They can’t manage the whole world. The rest of the world decides whether they should work with us based on their own business interests and positions. If some companies don’t want to work with us, it’s like a hole in the airplane. We’re working to fix the hole but the airplane is still able to fly.
Of the chips we’ve been using, half are from U.S. companies and half we produce ourselves. If the U.S. imposes further restrictions on us, we’ll reduce our purchases from the U.S. and use more of our own chips. If American companies have permission from Washington to sell to us, we will continue to buy from them.
Bloomberg: What extent of damage, how much damage do you expect to be felt in the consumer division of the business, so smartphones and laptops, which depend on U.S. chips but also U.S. software?
Ren: We might miss our expected growth target, but we are still growing. Being able to grow in the toughest battle environment; that just reflects how great we are.
Bloomberg: Does the actions that the U.S. has taken, does that mean you’re going to have to ramp up that R&D spending even more to develop your own in-house products and components?
Ren: We set our sale prices relatively high. Our current prices are higher than Ericsson and Nokia. So we can make lots of money.
As long as we can afford to live and as long as we can survive, we would like to invest more in R&D. Even during the most difficult time, we still need to invest in the future, otherwise we don’t have a future.
Bloomberg: You had bragging rights earlier this year, you overtook apple as the number 2 smartphone maker, you saw smartphone sales in the first quarter jump by about 50%, and of course you do have that goal of becoming the number one smartphone maker in the world. Does that goal now have to be shelved?
Ren: An apple is as big as this. We became a peach over the past few years, a bit bigger than an apple. We might become a plum in coming years, smaller than an apple. But still edible. A plum is just a little bit sour and bitter.
We can become bigger or smaller. We are not a public company, we are not only pursuing growth or profit. It’s good enough for us to just survive.
Bloomberg: There have been calls by some in China for Beijing to retaliate against Apple. Is that an action that China should be looking at taking?
Ren: That will not happen, first of all. And second of all, if it happens, I’ll be the first to protest. Apple is the world’s leading company. If there was no Apple, there would be no mobile internet. If there was no Apple to help show us the world, we would not see the beauty of this world. Apple is my teacher, it’s advancing in front of us. As a student, why should I oppose my teacher? I would never do that.
Bloomberg: You’ve talked about having a 2-year lead in terms of 5G, on your competitors. Does that lead get eroded?
Ren: Definitely. If we slow down it’s because the wing of the airplane has lots of holes. If we fly slowly but others fly fast, of course they can catch us up. But we will keep fixing the holes. We will fly fast again once all the holes are fixed.
There's more at
.
