Huawei seeks shared growth with Asian partners in digital economy

SHENZHEN, China -- Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies said Wednesday that it's looking to continue exploring opportunities for joint growth and shared success with its Asia-Pacific business partners in the digital economy.

The Huawei Asia Pacific Partners Conference 2023, hosted by Huawei APAC, kicked off at the Shangri-La Hotel in Shenzhen -- an emerging tech city in China’s Guangdong province and the home of the Chinese IT company. Under the theme of “Grow Together, Win Future,” about 1,200 participants from over 10 countries attended the two-day event, which kicked off on Wednesday.

“Booming digital economies are striding forward. We expect the number of global connections to exceed 200 billion by the year 2030. ... The digital and intelligent transformation are creating waves that will sweep across the globe. Together, they will create a market space exceeding $1 trillion," said David Wang, Huawei's executive director of the board and chairman of the ICT infrastructure managing board.

While $3.4 trillion worth of spending is expected to be made in 2026 for the global digital transformation, the Asia-Pacific region is a huge market that Huawei and its partners cannot ignore, Wang said. With the aim of seizing opportunities through partnerships, it has designed strategies for three major markets, namely the named account market, commercial market and distribution business.

According to Huawei, the Asia-Pacific market has long been an engine of global economic growth and a leader in digitalization and innovation initiatives.

Huawei has committed to increasing its investment in partnerships and incentives for its more than 9,900 enterprise and cloud business partners, hoping to create greater value for customers and promote the region's digital economy development and unleash digital productivity.

“We’ll grow together and achieve shared success together. We believe that we can only succeed when our partners succeed. Let’s work together to seek these new opportunities and achieve shared growth,” Wang said.

Huawei will create products under the new sub-brand, Huawei eKit, and optimize IT platforms to accelerate SMEs' digital transformation, according to Bob Chen, vice president of Huawei's Enterprise Business Group.

Nicholas Ma, president of Huawei APAC Enterprise Business Group, also spoke at the event, delivering the company's five-year forecast for the Asia-Pacific region. Huawei expects to see its business in the region grow rapidly over the coming years, with partners contributing to 95 percent of the company's enterprise-sector revenue. The partners are also expected to take home $800 million per year just by selling Huawei products and services, Ma said.

While Wang mentioned that green, low-carbon development has also become a global trend, Huawei Digital Power's president of global marketing, sales and services, Charles Yang talked about seizing low-carbon opportunities to create a better, greener future.

Huawei has operated in the Asia-Pacific market for over 20 years, and is dedicated to becoming a major contributor to the region's digital economy. It has built a world-leading and secure technology ecosystem, combining its strengths in digital and power electronics technologies. The firm's goal is to develop a digital power technology company around a robust and sustainable ecosystem, Yang said.

During the panel discussion sessions, the panelists debated how to strengthen collaboration to maximize individual strengths and how to work out feasible solutions to real-world business problems. They also discussed what support was needed in product technology and policy areas to respond quickly to changing market needs.

The next three decades will be defined by decarbonization, digitalization and intelligent transformation, Wang said. "In 2023, these industries will continue experiencing a period of explosive growth, with projections indicating a potential market value of trillions of dollars."

During Wednesday's event, Huawei also launched six new partner alliances for the Asia-Pacific region, one each for the government, finance, electric power and roads and waterway and port industries. Over 70 partners from across the Asia-Pacific pledged to develop capabilities and seize opportunities from industrial digital transformation in the Asia-Pacific market.

At the InnovAsia Tech Talk session held for reporters on the same day, the Chinese tech giant shared its successful digital stories in the Asia-Pacific region, including in China, Thailand, Macau and Malaysia. The cases included Smart Tianjin Port and Smart Agrivoltaic Power Plant in China, as well as Lao's Asia-Potash International Investment, the Asia-Potash's first smart mine in southeast Asia, which implemented Huawei's Smart Mining Solution.

By Jie Ye-eun

Korea Herald correspondent