In 2004, Huawei failed in the domestic market because of a bad bet on GSM, but fortunately, Ren Zhengfei seized the straw of the overseas market and finally broke out and began to free up his hands to plan new business.

At that time, mobile phones were a natural choice, but the core technology of chips had been firmly in the hands of the West, a situation that made Ren Zhengfei on pins and needles.

After thinking for a long time, Ren Zhengfei asked he Tingbo and said to her, "if I give you 20,000 people and an annual R & D funding of US $400 million, you must stand up!" Only in this way, when others cut off our food, we can still use the backup system! "

At that time, Huawei had only 30, 000 people and spent less than $1 billion on research and development, which meant that Ren Zhengfei bet on the future of Huawei on he Tingbo's shoulders.

He Tingbo, 35 at the time, had worked for Huawei for eight years and knew Ren's work style very well, but even so, she was surprised by Ren's boldness.

1

In October 2004, Huawei Hayes was officially established.Ren Zhengfei set a goal for Hayes to recruit 2000 people and export 4 billion yuan within three years. As a result, by 2006, the first goal had already been completed, while the second goal could not be said at all, because Hayes did not even know his own position.

Around 2006, MediaTek across the Taiwan Strait pioneered the Turnkey project in the industry, where the main functions of mobile phones were integrated on a small chip, which greatly reduced the difficulty of making mobile phones. As a result, fake phones are rampant across the country, and MediaTek has become one of the leading chipmakers in the world.

Hayes, the success of MediaTek, also wants to learn, but chip development is a highly sophisticated technology, which is technically difficult and has a long research and development cycle.

After three years of hard work, Hayes has only made a little progress in set-top boxes, data cards, and video codec chips, but there is no greater breakthrough at all, let alone the so-called three-year export target of 4 billion yuan.

This situation did not improve slightly until 2009, when Hayes released its first application processor, K3V1, but unfortunately, K3V1 was not successful.

K3V1 uses 110nm technology, which is quite backward at that time, and the operating system chooses Windows Mobile. So K3V1 was unpopular from the start, and even Huawei's own mobile phone factory didn't want to use it. Hayes had no choice but to cooperate with the shanzhai factory outside, which not only failed to make money, but also hurt Huawei's brand.

Why can't Hayes' chip be made well? Huawei executives questioned this question many times at the meeting. Hayes has been suggested that Qualcomm Inc's chip is supported by tens of thousands of mobile phone manufacturers around the world, and Apple Inc and Samsung both use their own chips.As a parent company, why doesn't Huawei support Hayes chips?

Learning from the bitter lesson, Huawei integrated chip business and terminal business at the end of 2009, and must fully support the development of Hayes.

In 2010, Hayes launched the first TD-LTE baseband chip, the Barone 700, which finally broke a crack in Qualcomm Inc's airtight line of defense. Hayes started using Android, and the chip architecture was replaced by the advanced ARM.

In August 2012, K3V2 was born.

K3V2 uses 40nm technology, is a more mature product, at that time known as "the world's smallest quad-core A9 processor", but compared with Qualcomm Inc, Samsung, its process, performance are still a big gap. At that time, Yu Chengdong was just at the helm of the mobile phone business, eager to get rid of his low-end image, and he was not satisfied with K3V2.

Facts have proved that Yu Chengdong is right. At that time, Huawei phones using K3V2 were resisted by consumers because they generated too much heat, and K3V2 compatibility problems emerged one after another, which put Huawei developers on the run.

The K3V2 didn't work, but he Tingbo and the Hayes team couldn't provide an immediate replacement, a situation that lasted for two years, forcing Huawei's D2, P6 and many other models to use the K3V2.

Under the influence of Hayes, the market evaluation of Huawei mobile phone in those years was not good, and even aroused negative questions for a time, and under the atmosphere of Huawei's corporate culture, you can imagine how much pressure he Tingbo and her Hayes team faced at that time.

At that time, many Chinese consumers thought that Huawei was foolishly resting on its laurels by not using Qualcomm Inc's chips, but Huawei was unimpressed.

Many years later, he Tingbo wrote in a letter to employees: "in that light season, the company made the assumption of extreme survival and predicted that one day all advanced chips and technologies in the United States would not be available. Huawei will continue to serve its customers. For this assumption that it will never happen, thousands of children of Hayes embarked on the most tragic long March in the history of science and technology. "

In early 2014, the Kirin 910 chip, which was upgraded to 28nm, was born, and Hayes integrated the baseband chip and application processor into one SOC (system-on-chip) for the first time.

After ten years of sharpening the sword, Hayes finally tied Qualcomm Inc.

Before the birth of Kirin 910, Qualcomm Inc almost monopolized the world's high-end baseband chips, but the situation reached a turning point in 2014. From Kirin 910 to Kirin 980, Hayes is not only ahead of 7nm in technology, but also inferior to Qualcomm Inc in performance and power consumption. Huawei, equipped with Hayes chips, has made continuous breakthroughs and has the strength to challenge Apple Inc's position in the industry.

In April 2019, the pattern of the world chip industry has undergone a major change, Apple Inc said that he hopes to purchase 5G chips from Huawei.

So, how did Ren Zhengfei answer this question?

2

Forty years of ups and downs have made 1.4 billion Chinese people fully realize that there is no future for closing the door to the country, and that only by persisting in reform and opening up can we have a better future.

Huawei sympathizes with this.

On April 15, Ren Zhengfei said Huawei was "open" to selling high-speed 5G chips and other chips to smartphone competitors, including Apple Inc.

If you turn the clock forward one year, I am afraid that no one in China and the United States could have thought that the plot reversal would come so quickly. Last year, China wanted to buy American chips, but no one gave such an "open attitude" answer.

Apple Inc is Huawei's biggest competitor, but Huawei is not afraid and has no intention of blackmailing Apple Inc with 5G chips. What Huawei wants to do most now is to promote Huawei 5G globally as much as possible.

In April, Germany's Economic Weekly reported that Ren Zhengfei said Huawei had suggested to Germany that it was willing to sign a "non-monitoring agreement" to address security concerns about Huawei's involvement in the construction of Germany's 5G mobile infrastructure. Jorgen Horman, chairman of Germany's Federal Network Agency, said in an interview that Huawei has no intention of preventing Huawei from participating if it meets all the security requirements.

"We are willing to sign non-monitoring agreements with governments, including the British government, to make our equipment meet the standard of no monitoring and no back door," Huawei Chairman Liang Hua said in London, Reuters reported on May 14. " A British government spokesman said: "the security and resilience of the British Telecom network are critical, and we exercise strict control over the Huawei equipment currently deployed in the UK." He also stressed that the results of Huawei's telecom supply chain assessment will be released in the near future, and all network operators must abide by the decisions made at that time.

On May 15, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring the United States to enter a state of emergency. He demanded that US companies should not use telecommunications equipment produced by companies that pose a risk to national security. The move is widely seen by foreign media as laying the foundation for blocking Huawei's business.

This is not the first time Huawei has been suppressed by the United States, nor will it be the last with Trump's personality. In fact, this kind of thing has never stopped since Huawei opened up the US market in 2001.

In January 2003, Cisco Systems, a traditional US telecommunications giant, took the lead in suing Huawei in federal court, arguing that Huawei had infringed its intellectual property rights. But in 2004, the lawsuit ended with Huawei and Cisco Systems each declaring a settlement.

In 2010, Motorola sued Huawei, alleging that it was involved in an elaborate plot involving several former Motorola employees and a shell company set up to steal cellular network technology. The case also ended with a settlement between the two sides.

The power to crack down on Huawei is far from these companies, and even government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Commerce, Congress and the Committee on Foreign Investment have been cracking down on Huawei one after another over the years on the grounds that it may harm national security. Huawei has not only been excluded from the network infrastructure of mainstream operators in the United States, but also failed in many mergers and acquisitions.

In 2007, Huawei tried to acquire 3com, which was blocked by the US government.

In May 2010, Huawei's attempt to acquire some of the assets of 3Leaf was blocked by US authorities.

Huawei had won the tender for its network upgrade in the autumn of 2010, but failed with the intervention of Congress and the US Department of Commerce.

In January 2018, Huawei was about to announce a partnership agreement with US telecom operator AT&T Inc at the CES show in Las Vegas, but at the last minute, the US government put pressure on AT&T Inc to give up cooperation with Huawei and not to sell Huawei smartphones in the US.

AT&T Inc, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon Communications Inc, the four major operators that account for 80% of the mobile phone market in the United States, are unable to cooperate with Huawei. As a result, Huawei mobile phones can only be sold by retail on Amazon.Com Inc's website and Best Buy supermarkets.

Best Buy, the largest US electronics retailer, also stopped buying handsets from Huawei and stopped selling Huawei products in March 2018.

In August, Trump signed the US National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2019. Section 889 of the bill prohibits all US government agencies from purchasing equipment and services from Huawei.

On December 1, Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's chief financial officer, was arrested in Vancouver, Canada. The United States asked Canada for extradition, but on December 11, Trump said he was willing to intervene with the U.S. Department of Justice in the Meng Wanzhou case if it helped to reach a trade agreement between the United States and China. The truth is clear, but it is a kidnapping for political gain.

However, Huawei did not give in. On March 7, 2019, Huawei announced a lawsuit against the US government, suing the US National Defense Authorization Act for the 2019 fiscal year as unconstitutional.

In the early morning of May 17, he Tingbo, president of Huawei Hayes, sent a letter to employees. He Tingbo wrote in the letter:

"for thousands of days and nights, we traveled hard by night and night. Huawei's product field is so broad, the technology and devices used are so diverse, in the face of thousands of scientific and technological problems, we have failed countless times, confused, but never give up.

In the years that followed, when we gradually got out of confusion and saw hope, it was inevitable that we were a little lost and unwilling, worried that many chips would never be used and become spare tyres that had been pressed in the closet.

"Today, in this extreme and dark moment, the superpower mercilessly interrupted the technological and industrial system of global cooperation and made the craziest decision to put Huawei on the entity list under baseless conditions.

"Today, it is the choice of history. All the spare tires we have built have turned 'positive' overnight! Years of painstaking efforts, overnight to fulfill the company's commitment to continuous service for customers. Yes, these efforts have been linked together to ensure the strategic safety of most of the company's products and the continuous supply of most of the products. Today, this darkest day is the day when every ordinary son and daughter of Hayes becomes a hero of the times! "

He Tingbo's letter also tells every Chinese that the US chip blockade will not defeat Huawei, and Huawei will certainly be able to break through on its own.

So where does Huawei's confidence in breaking through come from?

3

Not long ago, Professor Zhou Qiren, a famous economist, gave a speech. He said, "China's economy has basically been in a state of breakthrough in the past two years, and perhaps in the next few years.”

Why break through? What power are we surrounded by?

Zhou Qiren said: there are mainly two forces, one is that the so-called great change in the global pattern has not occurred in a century, in which China is being besieged, and the other is some changes in the domestic economy brought about by our own years of rapid growth, which surrounds us, too. Whether this breakthrough can be completed or not is related to whether China can be promoted to the ranks of modern powers, and at the same time, it will also have some extension impact on the trend of the global economy.

So how can China break through?

Professor Zhou Qiren said that "poverty is competitiveness", which is open to question.

At first glance, low labor costs really seem to be an advantage, because companies are always looking for places with lower costs, so when China's labor costs are gradually rising, many enterprises begin to move to Southeast Asia and even Africa. But in fact, think deeply about it. Low labor cost is an effect, not a cause. People who think that low labor cost is an advantage actually reverse causality.

In fact, the low labor cost shows that the manpower in the region has no market competitive advantage, so it is cheap, not because it is cheap, so it has become an advantage. Decades ago, the level of knowledge and skills of Chinese workers can not be compared with the current level, at the same time, there are some institutional obstacles, the efficiency of workers is not high, so the cost of labor is low. But contemporary China is completely different. Poverty is no longer China's competitiveness.

Efficiency is the core competitiveness of China at present. In the era of market economy, the price is only the result, the pricing of manpower is based on its efficiency value, and the high income is because he has higher efficiency. Therefore, we should not worry that foreign investment will continue to be lost because the cost of manpower is not as low as that of India and Southeast Asian countries. In other words, even if there is a loss of foreign capital, the crux of the problem lies not in human costs, but in other factors, such as inefficiency caused by some institutional factors.

Huawei has never taken the route of low labor costs. It is well known that Huawei people's wages are very high, but at the same time Huawei's work is very hard, which shows that high efficiency corresponds to high wages, the basic economic logic is correct.If China wants to break through, it must also find ways to improve the efficiency of all aspects of society.

Professor Zhou Qiren has prescribed three prescriptions for China's breakthrough: the first is to reform the breakthrough, the second is to deal with the breakthrough, and the third is to innovate, all of which are correct.

Professor Zhou emphasized the breakthrough of innovation, but in fact, the social consensus of innovation breakthrough is very high, and there are almost no fundamental differences. Innovation is the nature of enterprises, whether the economy is good or not, enterprises will strive to innovate, this point does not even need to be emphasized.

What really needs to be emphasized is to reform and deal with breakthroughs.

Conclusion

Huawei is indeed the best corporate representative in China.

It is very independent, never expected to live on American chips, and determined the path of independent research and development early on. It is very bold, as early as 2004 at the expense of chip research and development, after ten years of wind and rain finally succeeded.

What is even more rare is thatNo matter how the world changes, no matter how many hardships it has experienced, Huawei has always maintained an open mind to the world, and Huawei is willing to keep an "open attitude" even to its rivals.

Talk, the door is always open; fight, resolutely accompany to the end, this is the attitude.

Such Huawei is indeed invincible, even if there are thousands of troops ahead, swords into the forest, its breakthrough is bound to succeed.