Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., a giant Chinese company with annual sales of about 9 trillion yen. Recently, the US authorities indicted the company's vice chairman, and it is a major telecommunications equipment manufacturer that has become a "US-China dispute". What kind of company is this and what makes it so great? We asked Yukio Imamichi (67), a visiting researcher at Osaka City University who has been researching Huawei for more than 10 years, to explain the book "Huawei's Technology and Management". There was a strategy of the company to gather human resources with an exceptional salary.
--Huawei is described as a "major telecommunications equipment company," but I don't really have an image of what kind of company it is. Speaking of Japan, which company should I imagine?
"Huawei first grew by manufacturing telephone exchanges. In Japan, it would be Hitachi, NEC, or Fujitsu. Huawei is not limited to that, now it is making smartphones.In that respect, You could say it's a company like Apple, which makes the iPhone."
"It means that while also handling communication equipment, it is also a manufacturer that makes terminal equipment such as smartphones. Looking around the world, companies that make both are now facing economic sanctions from the United States. Telecommunications (ZTE) is a minority, but in about 30 years since its founding, it has grown to operate in 170 countries and regions and has about 180,000 employees.”
--Please tell us about the founder.
"Mr. Ren Zhengfei (74), the current CEO. Originally from Guizhou Province, where there are many poor families, he entered the People's Liberation Army after graduating from a vocational school and served as an engineer. After that, he became the president of a subsidiary of a state-owned oil company, but was defrauded by a customer and was defrauded of a large amount of his property. Huawei was founded in 1987 by six people, led by Mr. Ren.
--Were you building a telephone switchboard from the beginning?
"No, the company name has 'technology', but we sold fat-reducing drugs and gravestones. Eventually, we started importing telephone exchanges from overseas and selling them to hospitals and schools. Eventually, we started our own business. I decided that it would be more profitable to make it, so I decided to manufacture it.”
--What do you think is amazing about Huawei?
“At the time of the company’s founding, and even now, it’s the ability to attract the people who support our technical capabilities. However, we are scouting excellent human resources from rival companies in Europe and the United States, state-owned enterprises in China, and universities.We are currently hiring 8,000 to 10,000 people every year, and about 600 of them have doctoral degrees. 5,600 have master's degrees."
"The salary level has not been disclosed...
