Huawei is preparing to invest CNY10 billion ($1.4 billion) to establish a new R&D centre in Shanghai to create wireless/IoT equipment and components.
The news follows the vendor’s announcement that it will release a smartphone that runs using a China-developed OS, and supports Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei’s assertion that the vendor could survive a ban on importing components and software from the US, which has blacklisted Huawei due to security concerns.
The new Shanghai facility will be Huawei’s fifteenth R&D centre worldwide, and will employ around 40,000 people. The vendor also boasts 36 joint innovation centres, and has claimed that it invests between $15 billion and $20 billion annually into R&D.
Ren’s comments on the US ban indicated that Huawei had prepared for such an issue, with the founder later adding that Huawei would “reinvent” itself to be less dependent on imports. He noted that doing so would require increasing its level of R&D investment to as much as $100 billion in the next five years.
Huawei’s H1 revenue was strong despite the US blacklist, hitting CNY401.3 billion – a 23% year-on-year increase. However, the vendor’s chairman Ling Hua cautioned that the true effects of the trade ban had not been felt yet.
