Huawei shows the way — despite US ban
Anything Samsung can do, Huawei can do better. That seemed to be the underlying message at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week when Huawei unveiled its first handset with a folding screen, just four days after Samsung launched the Galaxy Fold.
Both the Huawei Mate X’s front smartphone display and its fold-out tablet screen are substantially bigger than that of the Fold. The device also uses a more elegant design, and folds up into a gadget two-thirds the thickness of the Fold.
It was no isolated message, though. Elsewhere at MWC, Huawei dominated conversations, devices and announcements around 5G, the next generation of mobile networking technology, which will give base stations up to a thousand times the capacity of 4G towers, depending on the specific version of technology used.
The message? “We are leading the 5G revolution.” Despite the presidential decree banning the US federal government from using Huawei equipment in national networks — or perhaps because of it — the Chinese giant announced one global partnership deal after another.
Strategically, these included roll-outs in countries regarded as key US allies. For example, it announced it had deployed more than 10,000 5G sites across South Korea for the LG Uplus mobile operator.
Huawei’s biggest rival in 5G networking technology, Ericsson, also made a big play of its extensive partnerships. CEO Börje Ekholm spoke of ventures ranging from Softbank in Japan to Deutsche Telekom in Germany. Most tellingly, given Australia’s halt on deploying Huawei equipment, during MWC 2019, Ericsson also announced partnerships with that country’s Telstra operator and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
However, Ericsson was overshadowed by the sheer scale of Huawei’s innovations. Aside from the Mate X handset winning the Best of Show award from MWC organisers GSMA, it is also the first phone to be equipped with a 5G processor, the Balong 5G01 chipset. Huawei claims the Balong can reach download speeds of 2.3GB/s. It connects to 4G and 5G networks.
The chipset is also the basis for Huawei’s 5G routers aimed at consumers and businesses, and representing the first extended range of such devices using 5G. Though one-time phonemaker HTC launched a 5G Hub that is partly intended to support future versions of its Vive virtual reality headset, only Huawei appears ready with an ecosystem of 5G technology.
It is leading this revolution with the Huawei 5G CPE Pro, a home router for connecting smartphones, homes and offices.
The chipset, said Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu, “will enable everything to sense, and will provide the high-speed connections needed for pervasive intelligence”.
“Huawei has an integrated set of capabilities across chips, devices, cloud services and networks,” he said.
The unstated message was that countries that blocked Huawei products would miss out on the revolution. Presidential decrees are unlikely to hold it back.
Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram on @art2gee
China’s tech giant matches Samsung’s folding phone and leads 5G revolution