Huawei booms in Western Europe on innovation

Compared with Huawei's expansion in the US, which has run into roadblocks, the company has been welcomed in most European countries.[Photo / Provided to China Daily]

BARCELONA -- Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology solutions provider, is seeing its enterprise business booming in Western Europe, a senior Huawei manager said.

"Our enterprise business has been growing very fast in Western Europe since we started such business here in the second half of 2012," Leon He, president of Huawei's Enterprise Business Group in Western Europe, told Xinhua.

Through its enterprise business, Huawei provides comprehensive and efficient ICT solutions and services to government and public sectors, finance, transportation, electrical power, energy industries and enterprises.

Speaking to Xinhua on the sidelines of the 2013 Gartner Symposium which concluded on Thursday, He refused to give specific figures but said the growth is "very fast."

According to He, enterprise business has become the fastest-growing part among Huawei's three business units, namely, telecom carrier networks, enterprise networks and consumer businesses.

He attributed Huawei's success in Europe to its ability to provide integrated services and its enormous investment in customer-centric innovation.

Huawei is strong in both providing integrated services and manufacturing its own ICT equipments, while its competitors in Europe or the United States are only strong in one of the two, He said.

Huawei is able to provide a full series of ICT products and solutions, including enterprise networks, enterprise wireless, network power, unified communication and collaboration, cloud computing and data centers, and enterprise information security.

Customer-centric innovation is Huawei's another key to success, He said.

Huawei has 70,000 research & development staff globally, which comprise more than 46 percent of Huawei's total employees worldwide, according to He.

"Every year, we invested more than 10 percent of our revenues in innovation. More importantly, our innovation is based on users' requirements," he added.

Huawei's R&D expenses totaled $3.8 billion in 2011, and the company spent cumulatively over $16.6 billion on R&D over the last decade, according to He.

Thanks to its customer-centric innovation, Huawei has not only avoided the negative effects of the European debt crisis, but also benefited from it, He said.

"The debt crisis has actually been an opportunity for us, because a lot of government departments are trying to find cost-effective products and solutions, which we are good at, under fiscal pressure," said He.