Ex-Huawei staff held over ‘leaks’

underlines once again that China is the world’s most competitive smartphone market, with the largest number of handset vendors.

“For any new player which wants to scale up rapidly, such as LeEco, it has no other choice but to poach experienced talent from established companies,” Xiang added.

In 2016, Huawei shipped 139 million handsets, up 29 percent year-on-year, International Data Corp said.

Huawei’s stellar growth has lured rivals to vie for its talent with handsome salary packages. Last year, a string of ex-Huawei senior executives joined LeEco and CoolPad.

Liu Jiangfeng, the former president of Huawei’s smartphone sub-brand Honor, took the helm of CoolPad’s smartphone business in August.

Xu Xinquan, former president of Huawei’s e-commerce business, joined LeEco last year.

Fu Liang, an independent telecom analyst, said the case also highlighted that employees should raise their legal awareness, attaching high importance to employers’ confidentiality agreements.

“It is crucial to protect intellectual properties,” Fu said.

Last month, Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, said at an internal meeting that the company would step up staff management and crack down on corruption and bribery.