6

Q Huawei Technologies is one of the world's largest suppliers of telecommunications equipment and mobile phones. How was the idea for the company born?

In 1987, our founder and CEO, Mr Ren Zhengfei, started the business with RMB 20,000 (about USD 3,000), taking a chance on the fast development and booming requirements of telephones, and later mobile phones, in the Chinese market. In the very beginning, we were just a small dealer for foreign telecommunications equipment, until we researched our first successful c&c08 switcher in the Chinese market. Since that time, more than 400 telecom companies have come and gone, only a few have survived the technological and market requirements, which are changing every day. Huawei has maintained 28 years of highspeed development, step by step, to become the biggest information and telecommunication technologies giant in the world.

Slovenia is our future strategic market, we have a lot of expectations and plans for it, to support the digital agenda of Slovenia.

Q The company itself was locked out of a major market in 2012, having overtaken Ericsson. The telecom business in 2014 recorded a 20% increase in revenue to 288 billion yuan (USD 46.45bn). What is your market share and future expectations?

At the corporate level I don't have the detailed figure about this, but from the perspective of sales revenue, we are already number one in carrier network business and one of the top three telecom vendors on the world. Even in Europe, the hometown of the traditional telecom vendors, we have a more than 33% share. This means recognition and trust of our technologies and services from customers and the market.

Q Huawei operates in 170 countries with the major growth in non-U.S. markets. How will you promote growth in the US and how do you perceive the Slovenian market and its consumers?

We are a strategic partner of 46 telecom operators within the top 50 in the world, such as Telefonica, Vodafone, Dutch Telecom, BT, etc. We have a good cooperation with more than 400 telecom operators. I believe customer trust is the best proof of the reliability and quality of our solutions and services. We won't give up any market and have enough patience to wait for it to open; with the support of customers we believe this will happen.

In Slovenia, with more corporations and projects realised together with our customers and local partners, we hope Huawei will become a prime strategic partner of the major telecom operators and enterprise customers, and also a favorable consumer brand for smart phone users. We would like to bring our advanced ICT planning and implementation experience to
Slovenia and become an ICT advisor for the local community, in this way we will try our best to contribute more to this country. Slovenia is our future strategic market, we have a lot of expectations and plans for it, to support the digital agenda of Slovenia.

Q Your company has 21 R&D institutes in countries including China, the U.S., Europe and others. With over 170,000 employees, around 76,000 are engaged in R&D. What is the core competence and future vision of Huawei R&D activities?

R&D is the soul of Huawei. Just in the past decade, we invested USD 30.7bn in R&D, we are the Chinese company with the most patents in China, one of the top 50 patent holders in the US and one of the top 10 patent holders in Europe. We were also named by BCG as the most innovative company in 2014 and top 100 global innovators by Thomson Reuters.

Huawei R&D is leading ICT trends, like Graphene, SoftCOM, SDN, 5G, cloud computing, Big Data, the Internet of Things, cyber security technologies, etc. In addition, Huawei invests a lot in basic technologies, such as mathematics, algorithms, chips, engineering technologies, etc. Also on application technologies like LTE, 400G router, IT technologies, optical transmission, ultra-broadband, agile switches, cloud data centers, smart devices, etc, Huawei has already made great breakthroughs and these will, together, support the mission of the company: to build a better connected world.

Q To manage your business globally, localisation in every market is necessary. How does localisation guarantee cyber-security and information security?

Given Huawei is running its business globally in more than 170 counties and regions, we are already a good implementer of business localisation; in overseas subsidiaries our average localisation rate is more than 70%. We have an end-to-end process and regulations to guarantee the security in the cyber and information networks, we insert requests about this into 15 main processes of company and all employees have to pass cyber-security testing, which is a basic requirement for all positions. This is already a symmetric matter in the company's operations, like blood in the human body.