【英文】澳洲智库报告：遏制中国科技巨头：绘制中国科技巨头地图（36页）

英文研究报告 2021年06月16日 05:24 管理员

While Huawei’s decline in growth was most pronounced in North and South America in 2020, Europe, the Middle East and Africa collectively showed the next greatest decline, followed by the Asia–Pacific. This resulted in the company’s decision to pivot its priority industries to focus on developing sofware. In an internal memo made public in May 2021, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei wrote that Huawei should strive to ‘lead the world’ in sofware as the company seeks growth beyond its hardware operations.99 Although Huawei’s deputy chairman, Eric Xu Zhijun, said in an interview that the company’s goal for 2021 is ‘to survive’, experts such as Dan Wang, an analyst with Gavekal, have speculated that Huawei may pivot to new businesses, such as self-driving and electric-vehicle technologies.

Already, Huawei reportedly has plans to invest US$1 billion into researching self-driving and electric vehicles and is reportedly in talks to acquire a domestic automaker’s electric vehicle unit.101 Through investing in businesses that are less reliant on advanced chips and through strengthening its sofware business, Huawei is searching for new revenue sources.US sanctions have particularly afected Huawei’s access to international technologies, such as advanced chips, that are essential for the company’s products. When the US Government barred Huawei from purchasing semiconductors produced using US sofware or technology without a special licence, the move crippled Huawei’s smartphone business and resulted in the sale of its Honor budget smartphone brand.103 US sanctions also required Google to revoke Huawei’s Android licence, leaving the company without access to Google apps and services that have been critical for the functioning of Huawei’s smartphones.