Huawei, a smartphone brand that has exponentially risen and drawing admiration in the Saudi market in a short period of time, pledges not just to deliver the advanced innovations in a smartphone, but would like to actively participate in making the Kingdom's Vision 2030 initiative happen. Huawei's VP for Saudi Arabia Pablo Ning narrated in a recent interview, Huawei's commitment to excel in the market and be an enabler in instilling technical skills and provide employment for the Saudi youth. Excerpts from the interview follow: What makes a good smartphone? It is a combination of great software and hardware, and we develop both. Screen size is one of the most important factors, and our research teams are always studying the various markets' screen size needs all over the world. Screen resolution and quality is another important factor for media consumers. Since great moments can pop up anytime, everyone wants to capture it in the best way possible. That is why the camera element is important, and our partnership with Leica gives Huawei the edge in this domain as well. Battery consumption is another highly requested feature, and we are proud to have launched the Kirin 960 chipset in our flagship device the Huawei Mate 9, which strikes the perfect balance between performance and energy management. You can charge your phone for 20 minutes and use it for a full day. Thanks to the supercharge technology that Huawei Mate 9 has today. Design is an extremely important factor when deciding what phone to buy, and how to use it every day. That's why we have partnered with one of the leaders in this sector, Porsche Design, to launch beautiful and unique devices with the highest quality. Do you agree that there is now an ongoing intense competition in the smartphone industry? Does Huawei consider it healthy for its own growth? Are you not threatened that this degree of competition might have a detrimental effect on you, particularly in terms of profitability? The competition in the smartphone industry is very intense but exciting. Competition always helps put business in a better perspective. In term of profitability, I can say that we have seen an incredible growth in the last year and now we rank #3 in terms of smartphones sales. We are working on improving our ranking everyday with deep innovation in our upcoming products. What challenges and opportunities do you see in a competitive market? Is brand loyalty an important factor? How do you disabuse the market of this mindset? The challenge for companies is coming up with innovative technologies and products that are of interest to the user and that will make their lives better. For us, this is a huge opportunity, as we strongly believe in the importance of R&D, and continuously invest in it which paves the way for more innovative solutions, as evident by the past technologies that we pioneered with great software to compliment: Dual Cameras for best-in-class photos (P9), Force Touch before any smartphone had it (Mate S), Advanced Fingerprint Sensors (Mate 8, Mate 9, Honor 8, Nexus 6P, MateBook), Round Smartwatches, integrated global modem in the Kirin 960 Chipset (Mate 9), and many more. Brand trust is what we believe the most important factor. If users trust the brand, they will use its products, recommend its products to other people, and will consider it first for the things they want. A brand must have a foundation or stability, must continue to develop and innovate, must provide a relationship and most importantly it must deliver practical value and benefit in order to be trusted. Some companies get arrogant and lose stability, which yields faulty products, and the public would not trust the brand even if they continue to pump new products, since stability is not there. Other brands imitate without innovating, and users quickly notice this and go to a more innovative vendor. Others do not have offices next to their users, and lose the relationship element. The final element is the most important one, since if the product offers no value, no one would be interested in using it, regardless of all of the other factors. As you know, Huawei enjoys all four elements, and we are proud of this, but also keen on becoming closer to our consumers and making their lives easier and better with our new innovations. Do you agree that competition is good for the market? Do you claim that Huawei's sudden rise is due to this competition? As mentioned, competition is always helpful to put our business in a better perspective and our goal is to become the leader in the smartphone industry here in Saudi within the coming 3 years. I am confident that Huawei will become a strong player in smart devices. I will explain in detail: The first Apple iPhone was launched in 2007 and it has been about 10 years now. We anticipate that by 2020, there will be another big transformation for smart devices. There are a few drivers behind this transformation. First, consumers will start using 5G networks within the next five years, and artificial intelligence will make smart devices even more powerful. Improvement in product features such as audio and video will improve quality and possibly interaction. So by 2020, we will welcome a new era for smart devices and their intelligence. By then, the entire industry will see disruptive changes and more investments will be directed to this. Huawei has an advantage: While the whole world waits for 5G networks, our network engineers are fine tuning this technology. This enables our research and development teams to know the capabilities of the networks and build innovative applications and devices that make the best use out of it. Are lower prices brought about by this competition favorable to Huawei? What steps do you undertake to further grow as a business despite the low prices? For sure, the market is divided into prices categories, but what we always look for as a top priority for us is the quality of our products rather than the prices. On this front, let me mention that Huawei has established 16 R&D centers around the world and invests 10 percent of its annual revenue in research and development to ensure design, development, procurement and manufacturing meet the highest standards. At the same time, Huawei operates a quality management system (QMS) across product design, development, procurement, manufacturing and distribution. Our advanced simulation technology enables us to conduct simulation tests in the process of R&D and design, so we can recognize design risks in advance. Huawei is equipped with an industry-leading Reliability Laboratory with extreme reliability tests examining the quality of the smartphone. For example, our mechanical reliability test consists of hundreds of tumbling tests, 500 twisting tests, a 70kg load test, over 2,000 press tests, and tests under solar radiation, thermal shock, smog and hydrothermal conditions. The tests for falling, tumbling, long-term high heat and high humidity, button durability and RF index exceed industry standards. Huawei also conducts tests that are not typically conducted in the industry, like insertion tests for the earphone port, charge port and SIM card slots. How do you measure your standing in this competition? What do you think are Huawei smartphone's features that made the brand a celebrity in a short period? With Mate 9 as your flagship, do you think it has all the features that the most demanding and critical smartphone user/consumer/buff wants? The Huawei Mate Series is Huawei's premium flagship line design for the business consumer, with a durable body, large screen and long battery life accompanied by great performance and connectivity. At Huawei, one of our core values is consumer centricity. We always focus on finding ways for more people to enjoy our devices and technology. Our research has revealed that the consumer market is changing, with different segments of consumers requiring different things. We discovered that there is considerable interest in a phone that is both high quality, full of personality and exemplifies luxury. As a result, we're launching two models of the Huawei Mate 9 Series to offer consumers choice and experience. The newest member of the Mate Series, the Mate 9, delivers business users a breakthrough Android experience – featuring the fastest computing performance available today, breakthrough SuperCharge technology and a stunning new UX. The Huawei Mate 9 is a dynamic interplay of industry-leading hardware and advanced software that work together to keep users a step ahead. The key features of the device include: Kirin 960 chipset, the world's highest performing smartphone processor*; EMUI 5.0, an intuitive user interface that allows over 50 percent of features to be reached within two clicks; breakthrough SuperCharge technology that delivers a full day's charge in 20 minutes; second generation Leica dual-lens camerawith12-megapixel RGB sensor, 20-megapixel monochrome sensor and Hybrid Zoom, featuring a superior 2x magnification. What are the top five leading smartphone brands? Where would you rank Huawei? Huawei is the 3rd biggest Smartphone brand worldwide also rank 3rd in the Saudi market. I believe this is a good starting point for Huawei, and we have the passion and innovation to be the leaders in the smartphone sector. According to GFK research, our market share till end of October 2016 was 13% and we are confident that by end of this year we will gain more market share, as we do believe that consumers in Saudi Arabia are loving more our brand day after day. How do you sustain your ranking, much more aim for number one post? Obviously you learned from the mistakes of rivals? Can you tell us these mistakes and how do you convert them into you own advantage? As we have reached the 3rd rank in terms of smartphone sales in the Saudi market, we see it has been driven from the trust we built with our partners and customers. Huawei pays much care and commitment toward providing the most advanced technologies for its consumer categories, putting in their hands a world of exceptional experiences, which meet their needs and exceeds their expectations. As for the mistakes, it is worth mentioning that incidents in this sector have shown us the high risks and the stiff competition in the consumer electronics industry. Therefore, as a commercial company in such an industry, encountering such problems is quite common. A main takeaway for us, from this issue, is to seriously reflect and ensure that we prevent such problems from happening to Huawei, and examine how we can more improve the process of quality control for our products, from their innovation to the end-products. This, to us, is a very important reminder. What is the best platform for mobile app? What advantages does Android have vis-à-vis others like iPhone, Windows and BlackBerry? Android is the number one OS mobile platform with a great library of amazing apps. Its highly customizable interface makes room for companies to create amazing user experiences, one which have been successful with our EMUI. Users can easily change from one Android experience into another without losing their applications or data. How dedicated is Huawei's R&D in its quest for higher innovation? Does the industry expect to hear new technological advancement from Huawei that would further establish your market strength? How much is your R&D annual spending or what percentage of your annual net revenue is allocated to R&D? Huawei has established 16 R&D centers around the world and invests 10 percent of its annual revenue in research and development to ensure design, development, procurement and manufacturing meet the highest standards. In 2015, Huawei invested USD$9.2 billion in R&D, accounting for 15% of sales revenue. In the past 10 years, Huawei has invested approximately USD$37 billion in R&D. Innovation is our driver toward moving ahead. We believe also in innovation through global collaboration with world-class partners which fosters industry innovation and creation of the ultimate products. Through capitalizing on its strong R&D capabilities and market reach, Huawei has teamed up with world-class partners to promote industry innovation and create technologically advanced products that provide ultimate experiences for consumers. Now our cross-over partners are: Porsche Design, Leica, Audi, Harmon Kardon & Swarovski, where our Industry partners are like Google, Microsoft & Intel. How will you envision Huawei as a manufacturer of smartphone five years from now? What will be your market share in Saudi Arabia by that time? Five years from now, what do you think is the new innovation that a smartphone will feature? Is your R&D team working on this now? What I can say is that we have seen incredible growth in the last year and now we rank 3rd in terms of smartphone sales. Saudi Arabia in particular has responded well to our growing devices portfolio. Together with our partners, we have expanded our footprint with growing interest from consumers who are looking for the latest in specifications, better displays, a better camera and a wider range of apps. As mentioned, and according to GFK, Huawei now ranks 3rd in the smartphone sector in Saudi with 13% market share by end of last October, and our branding awareness has reached 62% as of end of April 2016. We will sure strive our best to secure that we will be the leaders in this industry after around 3 years from now. Is there any plan for Huawei to have a manufacturing plant here in Saudi Arabia in line with the government's Vision 2030 and National Transformation Program 2020? In what way would Huawei play a leading role in achieving these government initiatives? Saudi Arabia's new Vision 2030 represents the springboard from which the leadership will enact its progressive and ambitious plan for the country over the coming decades and reflects a long-term drive for economic reform, diversification and the eventual transition of the country into a knowledge based economy. Huawei will do its best to work align and support the vision by all means, whether in helping the youth to find a good job in Huawei, in the training field, in supporting the woman sector where we now are targeting to expand & have more females working at Huawei in Saudi Arabia. The recent decision issued by the Saudi Ministry of Labor to Saudize the phone retail sector and industry is a great opportunity for us at Huawei to lend a hand to the young Saudis to not only to train and employ them, but to also strategically develop distinguished partnerships in the local market that create more impactful Public Private Partnership (PPP) programs that understand the local needs. Our recent partnership with Saudi Technical and Vocational Training Corporation TVTC to train over 100 instructors – males and females - is just a start to achieve that. In mid of last June, TVTC & Huawei had celebrated the graduation ceremony of TVTC mobile maintenance training cooperation that has done with Huawei, which trained 100 instructors of TVTC in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Abha. Moreover, top 10 instructors had been sent to Huawei state of the art headquarters training facilities in China for the advanced mobile maintenance training. This initiative represents the renewal of the strategic cooperation between government bodies here in Saudi and Huawei. Our localized operations in Saudi Arabia enable us to contribute to socioeconomic development of this country by creating jobs. Working jointly with local industry leaders, we will be able to fully combine the advantages of our global value chain with local innovation capabilities, enabling local innovations to reach the global market. In this regard, few weeks ago, and as part of its plans to attract Saudi talent and support the Kingdom's 2030 Vision, Huawei Tech Investment Saudi Arabia hosted a two-day recruitment drive on 23-24 of last November at the Engineering Faculty of King Saud University, in Riyadh. This 2-day event is in line with Huawei's strategy to support the advancement of the Kingdom's ICT sector, nurture young talents and push forward the country's Saudization agenda. The event helps Huawei to expand the pool of potential Saudi candidates joining the workforce after graduation, while improving the number of Saudi nationals taking up careers in the ICT field. Investing in local talents through training centers and joint innovation centers has been a defining characteristic of our journey during the last 16 years. It is imperative that we focus to bring the Saudi highly skilled young people into the industry. In this regard, let me mention that Huawei has been voted among top 20 employers of choice for Saudi male graduates, according to a survey of KFUPM graduates just released few days ago by an online recruitment firm. Over 200 final-year students and recent graduates of King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals participated in this survey. This means much for us, and also at the same time reflects our commitment to creating jobs for Saudis. The survey asked graduates about the factors that drove them to choose their preferred employer. The top three factors mentioned were: 1) the quality of the training and development program, 2) the opportunity to do interesting and challenging work, and 3) good salary and benefits. Job security and company brand and reputation were also cited as important factors. We will sure continue in this strategy toward attracting more highly skilled Saudis who will help our business here in the local market. — SG
