Huawei bets heavily on research

China’s telecom equipment giant Huawei Technologies Co has been investing heavily in research and development ( R& D), and will maintain the current pace as the company looks to lift its position in an increasingly competitive environment, a top executive said on Tuesday.

Huawei has so far invested 310 billion yuan ($ 44.93 billion) in R& D, Xu Zhijun, vice chairman and rotating CEO of Huawei, said at a conference in Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province, according to a report on the news portal qq. com.

In 2016 alone, Huawei invested 76.4 billion yuan, accounting for 14.6 percent of its revenue that year, said the report. Xu said that Huawei will continue to invest about $ 20 billion each year.

“From Huawei’s perspective, the direction of future growth is what we have to think about each year,” Xu was quoted as saying in the report.

Noting a prolonged R& D cycle plagued by difficulties in technological innovation and an increasingly competitive external environment, Xu said Huawei will focus its R& D efforts on the areas of digitalization and cloud computing.

And Huawei’s R& D efforts are not just limited to the domestic market. It has been steadily expanding its R& D across the globe in recent years.

On March 22, Huawei made a new investment plan to establish a cloud data center and innovation labs in New Zealand, according to media reports. The deal would reportedly draw $ 282 million in investment from Huawei.

One day before the New Zealand deal, Huawei announced it would spend $ 20 million over the next three years to develop 15 OpenLabs, which include seven new labs planned to open in cities such as London, Paris, Moscow and Johannesburg in 2017, according to a company press release issued on March 22.

This plan would bring Huawei’s OpenLabs to a total of 12, which would increase to 20 by the end of 2019.

Xu also reiterated Huawei’s commitment to entering the US market, saying the company’s US strategy has not changed. He also denied earlier media reports suggesting that Huawei is under investigation in the US.

On March 31, Huawei reported global revenue of 521.6 billion yuan in 2016, a year- on- year increase of 32 percent, with net profit growing 0.4 percent yearon- year to 37.1 billion yuan.