UAE to remain ‘key growth driver for Huawei’

Dubai: Huawei plans to invest an additional $20 million or more towards the completion of the phase two of logistics centre at Jebel Ali Free Zone in bid to support UAE’s overall ICT ecosystem.

The Chinese company has invested around $3 million to set up a logistics centre in Jafza.

Initially, covering the GCC and Pakistan markets, he said the hub will have a capacity of approximately 4,500 square meters and an initial monthly output of around 2,000 product sets in the first phase.

“Huawei has long viewed the UAE as a strategic regional hub and is committed to supporting the country’s overall ICT ecosystem. In recent years, projects like Huawei Executive Briefing Centre in the Middle East as well as a Joint Innovation Centre established with Etisalat to combine global best practices with keen local insights will show our keen interest in the region,” said Peng Xiongji, General Manager of Huawei UAE.

He said the UAE will remain a significant region for Huawei as both a growth driver and a region where Huawei can create value for the business community and society as a whole.

“Our investments have further contributed to the wider expansion of China–UAE trade volume, which has collectively soared by an average 35 per cent every year for the past decade according to the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry,” he said.

In the Middle East, he said the company has continued to achieve robust growth over the last year including a significant increase in Huawei’s smartphones segment, which last year alone demonstrated 150 per cent growth over the previous year, with healthy prospects for the future.

“I think the major stimulus really came over the past 2-3 years when we saw many countries in this region start to leap-frog the developed world in terms of technology infrastructure. The rapid uptake of high-speed 4G LTE mobile broadband is just one example of this.” He said.

UAE now tops global rankings as one of the most connected societies in the world in terms of mobile penetration rates.

From telecom operators to private business and everyday consumers, the market demand for ICT innovations is clear. It is simply a matter of finding “how best to deliver products in a faster, more efficient way leveraging our global economies of scale,” he said.

“The Jafza facility will serve to bolster our total capacity, the types of solutions “we bring through the center, and to allow the center to cater to markets in the wider Middle East and part of Africa,” he said.

In the first phase, he said the Jafza facility will serve as the storage and distribution nerve for Huawei’s wide range of wireless and microwave network solutions. The second phase of development is expected to be completed by end of this year and “will see the hub further expand its storage capacity to cover a wider range of products across our various business groups, including data communication solutions, switch routers, and even Huawei consumer devices,” he said.

The new hub will first enable Huawei to offer an even quicker response to urgent delivery requests. From the placement of a purchase order until delivery of goods, the lead time is expected to be as short as tow to three weeks for GCC countries under phase one, and around four weeks or less for countries in Africa upon completion of phase two.