By Nnamdi Odumody
Huawei Technologies, the Shenzhen-based Chinese telecommunication equipment maker, saw a 25 .01 percent rise in profits as a result of its continuous investment in research & development which has seen it develop innovative products that have improved the customer experiences in its markets. It posted net income of CNY 59.30 billion in 2018 while its revenue for the year jumped by 19.50 percent to CNY721.20 billion.
According to its 2018 annual report, Huawei invested CNY 101.5 billion (14.1 % of its sales revenue) in R&D ranking fifth in the European Union Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. Guo Ping, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said at the release of the report that Huawei’s R&D expenditure over the last 10 years had reached more than CNY480 billion.
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According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) data on patents filed, Huawei filed 5,405 patent applications in 2018, placing it in first position among all companies globally.
Asia-based innovators filed more than half of all international patent applications via WIPO for the first time in 2018 on significant growth from China, India and the Republic of Korea, capping another record-setting year for WIPO’s global intellectual property (IP) services.
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China-based telecoms giant Huawei Technologies, with a record number of 5,405 published PCT applications, was the top corporate filer in 2018. It was followed by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. of Japan (2,812), Intel Corp. of the U.S. (2,499), Qualcomm Inc. of the U.S. (2,404) and ZTE Corp. of China (2,080). ZTE Corp., which was the top applicant in 2016, saw a 29.8% drop in the number of published PCT filings in 2018, its second straight year of declines. The top 10 applicant list comprises six companies from Asia, two from Europe and two from the U.S.
Huawei won the award for Supplier of the Year 2018, and Best Innovation 2018, at MTN’s Annual Supplier Award ceremony in Dubai, based on performance metrics such as quality, delivery and support, account performance management, innovation and meeting MTN’s compliance and risk requirements.
About 197 Fortune 500 companies use Huawei’s products, and in 2018, they sold 200 million phones getting 14.8 percent of global market share, and placing them in second position to Samsung Electronics. It has 36 joint Innovation centers across the world, 176,000 employees and 79,000 R&D employees.
Asia is now the majority filer of international patent applications via WIPO, which is an important milestone for that economically dynamic region and underscores the historical geographical shift of innovative activity from West to East.
Director General, WIPO, Francis Gurry
African companies should learn from Huawei and invest a significant portion of their annual profits on Research and Development to come up with products that will compete in blue and red oceans in order to consolidate their market dominance.