One of the biggest headlines that has been constantly making a splash in news recently in the past few months is the ongoing trade war between the US and China, and playing a significant role in this trade war is the Chinese tech company, Huawei (whose pronunciation no one is really sure about), I am just kidding, it is pronounced “Wah-Way” in case you were wondering.

Based in Shenzhen China, Huawei was founded in the year 1987 by a man called Ren Zhengfei at a period when the China tech space was nothing to boast about especially when compared with now contemporaries like the US Silicon Valley, rip-offs and fake products were what the Chinese tech space was famous for and excelled at, with the term “Made In China” used to generally connote fake products as we were growing up.

Huawei itself started as a reseller of used products but fast-forward some 30 years later and they produce a host of tech gadgets and components from networking equipment to computers, and to the sleek and beautiful looking smartphones which they are most notable for.

The story of Huawei’s growth is a deeply fascinating one, from underdog in the global tech market to tech behemoth, Huawei constantly positions itself for growth and innovation by investing sizeable amounts of money on research & development, more so than their competitors and this constantly reflects in their huge gains.

Currently, In terms of revenue, Huawei is second only to Samsung in the smartphone market and directly poised above Apple.
Despite facing a sleuth of trade restrictions and propaganda from the United States, with even more restrictions imposed on them in the ongoing trade war, Huawei still constantly manages to grow its piece of the market share.

Just a couple of days ago, Huawei unveiled its own operating system called the “Harmony OS” (which they had apparently been developing for the past 10 years), following a recent executive ban from the United States restricting it from using the Android operating system on any of its new devices, Their new operating system is even said to be 40-60% faster than Android while providing a seamless experience across all devices.

In a world where it seems like there is no displacing Microsoft, Apple and Samsung from their positions of top guns in the smartphone gadget and software industry, Huawei is proving itself to be a strong threat to the natural order of things in the tech global market.

There is no denying the fact that Huawei enjoys a favorable trade climate in their home country and enjoys significant backing from the Chinese government, but more than any other thing the secret to Huawei’s growth can be summarized in the simple philosophy that all 180,000 employees of the company put stock in and seem to generally share, that they are on a mission to connect the world and bring unprecedented intelligence to the world via their operations. As their President of Global Media and Communications puts it, this underpins everything that is done at Huawei and while it might come off as mere sophistry to the more cynical minded people out there.

Huawei has consistently shown that it is not just empty talk with them, from their brilliant yet affordable smartphones to unprecedented moves in IoT technology and emerging as the global leader in the 5G technology that is going to revolutionize the world, Huawei is on a warpath to invent the future.

To me, Huawei’s success is no fluke or by-product of government backing, it is a result of what happens when you couple visionary thinking with brilliant leadership and you are able to have people believe in the vision you paint for them.

Go Huawei!