Huawei to go back to gritty work
Huawei will be pivoting its business to help New Zealand achieve its climate change ambitions, writes David Court.
Huawei celebrated its 15th year of business in New Zealand recently. I spoke with Andrew Bowater, the deputy chief executive at Huawei Technologies, to find out if there is much left to celebrate at Huawei New Zealand these days.
With big changes happening in America – specifically, Donald Trump leaving the White House next month – I was expecting an optimistic but slightly repetitive conversation with Bowater. One where hewas keen to remind me of Huawei’s stance these past couple of years (that there isn’t any proof in the allegations it is facing, and Huawei is simply a casualty of the bigger United States-china trade war.)
But that’s not what I got. Bowater was still optimistic about Huawei New Zealand, but also optimistic for its future in new industries. ‘‘We’re not rolling out new products at the moment. We’ve just launched the Ideahub, and we’re moving into solar energy, data centres, and battery solutions – so there’s a lot of other things we can be doing.’’
Huawei, Bowater informed me, is the largest manufacturer of inverters in the world. That’s the technology that enables solar energy created to go back into the grid.
In fact, Huawei’s solar energy technology is already being used in Europe, the Middle East and South America. With the slight change of government emphasis here in New Zealand, Huawei will be pivoting its business to (Bowater hopes) help this country achieve its climate change ambitions.
I like this new strategy for Huawei. It feels like a pragmatic move. The consensus is that there are few political points for US President-elect, Joe Biden, to win by relaxing restrictions on Huawei and China. And with that in mind, I think Huawei is wise to focus on markets that can’t be linked to previous allegations.
Bowater agreed, and also reminded me that’s how huawei started. ‘‘With the unsexy bits. So it’s back to the future for us, getting back into the grittiness of networks. But this time energy as well as telecommunications.’’
This isn’t just a reactionary move, though. It’s easy to underestimate how big Huawei is, despite its 170,000 global employees and US$100 billion (NZ$142.5B) annual turnover. But solar is a market that Huawei is ‘‘ahead in’’.
‘‘And it’s one of those things that happens during a time like this, where we have the broad suite of products, and we didn’t even have some of these in themarket here, up until now. So we’ve pivoted to areas where we can make a positive contribution to the country.
‘‘Data centres are another area of focus for us, even just delivering a reliable power supply to data centres through our Smartli UPS (Li-ion battery power) solution.’’
Does this mean Huawei is
‘‘It’s back to the future for us, getting back into the grittiness of networks. But this time energy as well as telecommunications.’’
Andrew Bowater, above Deputy chief executive at Huawei Technologies New Zealand
finishedwith 5G and telecoms here in New Zealand? Yes and no. I got the impression that Bowater knows his company can’t win the 5G space right now. He also thinks that 5G here in New Zealand isn’t the priority it once was.
‘‘I think with Covid happening; it’s essentially caused everyone to maybe try and play the long game there. Let’s face it, the real hardcore use-cases for 5G are still some way off. When we think of what you could be doing with sensors and driverless cars and all that wonderful stuff we all get excited about in the industry – that’s still some way off.
‘‘Covid has given the operators the chance to press pause and question if they want to blow a lot of capital [on upgrading to 5G] at the moment and doing a big spend. When they could actually maximise what they can do with the existing networks and do some easier upgrades to 4.5G. And if you compare the speeds that Spark’s 4.5G gets compared to the so-called 5G of its competitors, the 4.5G beats the pants off 5G. So why wouldn’t they do that?
‘‘Arguably, there was quite a bit of marketing hype going on last year.’’
And this suits Huawei and Bowater just fine. ‘‘In the last 18 months to two years, we’ve had a dozen other projects approved by GCSB [New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau], including up into the last few weeks. And that’s why we’ve still got room for optimism, and you can see that in us celebrating our 15th anniversary here.’’