Huawei CEO and founder, Ren Zhengfei, sat down for an exclusive interview on Friday, 19 July 2019 with Yahoo Finance to discuss the future of the company after the Trump administrations move to target it — this is his first public interview since the G20 summit in June.
On 16 May 2019, the Trump administration announced a ban that restricting Huawei from doing business with any U.S company — meaning the Chinese smartphone manufacturer could no longer receive Android updates or purchase chipsets. The ban comes after the American government found Huawei’s advanced devices and technology to be a threat to national security.
Zhengfei says that Huawei took a serious knock just after the ban as sales initially fell by 40 per cent. However, he is adamant that Huawei needs nothing from U.S companies in order to survive — “If U.S companies were to stop supplying us altogether, our production would not stop for a single day in the future. Rather, we would ramp up production. There’s no lethal risk that threatens Huawei’s survival at all”.
Since attending the G20 summit, Trump has chosen to soften the ban by allowing small-medium sized enterprizes to transact with Huawei. Zhengfei notes that this has not made much of a difference for the company.
“The remarks made by Trump at the G20 Summit have had no substantial impact on Huawei. The supply of the vast majority of less critical components has resumed. But the U.S. has not made any decisions on the supply of critical components yet.”
When asked about the potential threat allegations facing his company, Zhengfei says, “Although the U.S is very strong, it hasn’t developed all these technologies yet, so they have decided to pick on us by focussing on insignificant issues. In 5G, America doesn’t have many cutting edge chips, ours are the most advanced in the world”.
Zhengfei closes by saying, “even if they have super-computer and super-large-capacity connections, the U.S might still fall behind because they don’t have super-fast connections. Shutting Huawei out is the start of the U.S falling behind”.
By Jenna Cook
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