When a country singles your company – which you took 31 years to build – out for embargoes, it’s likely that you’ll want to return the disfavour. But apparently not Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei.
The avuncular 74-year-old founder told Bloomberg Television that if China were to consider banning Apple products as retaliation, he would oppose the action.
The reason? He considers Apple his “teacher”. And he explains,
As a student, why go against my teacher. Never.
When Mr Ren said that he sees Apple as a teacher, he probably doesn’t mean that Apple put together a team and taught Huawei the ropes to mastering the mobile phone market.
Rather, it was more of setting the precedent.
Speaking at the Huawei Research Institute in Japan in 2017, Mr Ren said,
Apple has changed the world, we really need to thank them for that.
Without Apple’s introductions of their products and the creation of the mobile internet economy, Huawei may never have thrived.
Mr Ren went on to say that Apple was becoming overconfident and that gave Huawei an opportunity to stride ahead. A year later, the Chinese company overtook Apple as the world’s second-largest smartphone brand.
Apart from the company, Mr Ren also has tremendous respect for late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, once describing him as “super-great“.
Banning Apple products in China would do no one any good — unless we’re talking about brandishing political might in the trade deal.
So thankfully, Mr Ren isn’t one of those hawkish hardliners calling for retaliation and pulling the countries further from an agreement.
Nevertheless, the road for Huawei remains difficult. On top of Google’s withdrawal of their Android licences, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the SD Association have removed Huawei from their organisations.
All now rests on whether Huawei is as self-sufficient as they claim to be — that is, in coming up with a competitive operating system and 5G chip sets.
Featured image from MarketWatch.
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