Dubai: The Middle East remains a significant market for Huawei as both a growth driver and a region where it contributes to building a better connected world, a top official told Gulf News.
“We have viewed the Middle East as a significant market. Since the beginning, we have expanded in line with the needs of our regional partners but also with a great deal of focus, offering tailored solutions that meet the specific requirements of our customers,” said Pan En, vice-president of Huawei Middle East.
The Chinese player, which opened its “Huawei Innovation Centre” in Dubai in partnership with the Dubai Investment Development Agency (Dubai FDI) recently, hopes it will not only play a major role in Dubai’s Smart City programmes but also in developing human capital as well as innovative technology solutions for a wider regional and global community and enterprise population.
“It will also allow us to share our experiences in the pursuit of innovation with governments, enterprises and transformational initiatives across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region,” En said.
He said that Dubai has attracted the world’s attention through many ambitious and innovative infrastructure projects. Huawei is delighted to have contributed to the development of the country’s ICT industry during this time.
Huawei has 31 joint innovation centres worldwide. In the region, Huawei has tied up with Zain Kuwait in 2014 and in Saudi Arabia with Saudi Aramco and King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals in September 2015 to open innovation centres.
En said that every Huawei innovation stems from “close interaction” with its customers to understand their needs and market demands.
“The reason why Huawei can maintain steady growth amid complex competition in the global ICT industry is through continuous innovation. Innovation is based on customer needs and technological leadership, placing equal importance on those made by scientists and engineers in applications, products and services. This is what the Huawei Innovation Centres aim to achieve in each market,” he said.
Positive impact
He sees the overall landscape in the GCC to be very encouraging as many countries take ambitious steps to enhance their telecommunications, connectivity and other ICT services to the public.
In the upcoming years, this will have a “positive impact” on the socioeconomic health of many countries as they further develop their digital economy and improve the living conditions of people through ICT access.
The company is also working with regional telecom operators to adopt an evolutionary business strategy that protects and maximises the potential of 4G investments and also cultivates market demand for 5G.
5G is the fifth generation cellular technology after 4G.
The industry has not defined the specification for 5G but the focus is on more bandwidth and higher traffic speed and is expected to become a reality by 2020.
Currently with 4G, the latency rate is around 50 milliseconds, but 5G will reduce that to about one millisecond and with faster data speeds of up to 10Gbps.
En said that 5G technology is expected to become a “critical infrastructure” in a super-connected world, supporting 1,000-fold gains in network capacity and providing the necessary backbone for future Smart City projects in the Middle East. While the standardisation of 5G will begin in 2016, 5G technology has been a hot industry topic for quite some time.
Important bridge
“We have also signed a memorandum of understanding to explore super-speed 5G services with one of the region’s leading telecom operators. Huawei is also working with operators to trial and implement 4.5G services — an important bridge between today’s 4G LTE networks and the 5G era,” he said.
Huawei is investing more than $600 million (Dh2.2 billion) in the research of 5G technology by 2018. Huawei annually invests an average of more than 10 per cent of its total revenue into research and development (R&D) with the company maintaining a total of 16 R&D centres. The Chinese company’s R&D expenditure totalled about $6.6 billion in 2014.
