Huawei rising as a digital solutions provider

Huawei Technologies Co is stepping up its push to serve enterprises with digital solutions.

The electric power industry and airports are among its new targets. Huawei's efforts are aimed to cultivate new revenue growth points amid US restrictions.

Huawei said on its website it has established 10 new dedicated teams to offer digital solutions to organizations in fields like e-governance, airports, railways, interactive media, sports health and campus management.

Each dedicated team includes a range of experts from fields like research of fundamental technologies, technical, product development, engineering, sales, delivery and services. They are integrated into one independent department for each industrial scenario, so as to shorten product development cycles, and focus on achieving key breakthroughs.

Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei, said at a meeting in late March that these dedicated teams are meant to shorten the distance between customer needs and the solutions Huawei can offer, open up a fast and concise delivery process, and reduce material consumption and loss while delivering solutions to customers.

The changing international situation has heightened the pressure on Huawei to stabilize itself, actively adjust its teams and continue to create value for its customers. Flexible strategies and tactics are needed to achieve such goals, Ren said.

Digital solutions are expected to help Huawei to reposition itself as a services provider to enterprises and governments. The company has been seeking new growth engines to make up for the revenue loss in its smartphone business.

Last year, Huawei's revenue declined nearly 29 percent to 636.8 billion yuan ($100 billion).That was in large part due to plummeting sales of its smartphones and PCs, a result of chip supply challenges created by US government restrictions.

Huawei is leveraging its decades-old research and development advantages in information and communications technology to find new opportunities in promising businesses like smart car technologies, cloud computing, digital energy solutions and enterprise-oriented services.

Huawei established five dedicated teams in the past year to help accelerate digital transformation in sectors like coal, highways, ports, photovoltaic power and data centers－a strategy necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kitty Fok, managing director of market consultancy IDC China, said earlier, "The next five years will be a golden period for pushing forward digitalization, and governments around the world have attached great significance to digitalization."

Fok said direct investment in digital transformation worldwide will surpass $6.8 trillion in the 2020-23 period.

Global consultancy Gartner Inc forecast that worldwide information technology or IT spending is projected to total $4.5 trillion in 2022, up 5.5 percent from 2021.