Huawei does not intend to let itself be swept away by American threats: while the Chinese equipment manufacturer confirmed on Thursday 19 September that its next smartphone will not have Google's mobile applications because of the measures taken by the United States, it also highlighted a series of forward-looking initiatives at the Huawei Connect in Shanghai.
At this annual celebration, the company announced its intention to develop a strategy focused on statistical computing and presented its new supercomputer in the field of artificial intelligence, Atlas 900, “10 seconds faster than the previous world record”, commented Ken Hu, current CEO of Huawei. He said the company will continue to invest in two technologies: connectivity and computing, “two technologies that are equally important to developing an intelligent world”, he said in his opening speech.
Shanghai Connect was held in China from 18 to 20 September to great fanfare. About 20,000 people attended, including many information and communication technology professionals who came to present their products, interested stakeholders, as well as 250 journalists who, at least in the case of EUROPE, were graciously invited by Huawei.
Two communication campaigns
For several months, the company has been trying to mobilise journalists to respond to the US government's smear campaign. Convinced that the leader in 5G is conducting espionage activities on behalf of Chinese authorities, the Trump administration has blacklisted Huawei and its subsidiaries, thus preventing American companies from trading with the group as early as November. Washington has also decided to prevent US federal agencies, such as the Pentagon or NASA, from acquiring Huawei equipment that would enter as a “substantial or essential component of an entire system” and is also trying to convince its partners to follow its example.
At Shanghai Connect, Huawei remained true to his line of defence and pleaded good faith, reaffirming that “these suspicions are not based on any foundation”. 10 days earlier, the company had even offered to share its 5G technology, ideally with Apple or Amazon. In view of the situation, it also announced in Shanghai its intention to hire more software developers (US$1.5 billion).
“All Huawei does is avoid losing ground. They are trying to control the damage”, said Ernest Worthman, a senior member of the American IEEE association attending the conference in Shanghai. However, he considered it unlikely that Huawei will share all of its intellectual property rights: “Perhaps generic algorithms, applications or programs, but not those where they are strongest and fastest”.
Despite these attempts, on 18 September, Huawei was suspended from the global forum for incident response and IT security. And on 19 September, it had to introduce its new smartphones based on an Android open source operating system, without YouTube or other pre-installed Google services.
And in Europe?
For its part, the European Union, which represents 15% of Huawei's total revenues (compared to 49% in China), is at a crossroads on 5G: it must decide on its standards in terms of network security and take a position on the reference technology for connected cars.
All Member States have, at the invitation of the European Commission, carried out a national assessment on the security of 5G networks (see EUROPE 12222/23, 12326/14). These 28 reports will be complemented by the report of the European Cyber Security Agency by 1 October. They will allow Member States, together with the Commission, to decide by autumn 2020 whether regulatory measures should be taken. At this stage, despite rumours (including in the Estonian press), no Member State has yet specifically excluded Huawei.
According to several observers in Shanghai, Europe could move towards the German compromise, which consists of establishing a set of guiding principles, such as a non-espionage clause, to be respected by commercial actors (see EUROPE 12217/25).
The European Union must also take a position on a European standard for connected cars (STI-C). Last March, the European Commission opted for a technology derived from Wi-Fi, but the EU Council ultimately opposed it (see EUROPE 12213/37, EUROPE 12289/8). The Commission could therefore turn to another technology, C-V2X technology to integrate 5G, for which Huawei is at the forefront and for which China has already freed up frequencies, having already developed around 20 projects.
“The Commission's proposal was reasonable at the time it was presented, but the technology has since changed. In my opinion, the next step is to integrate 5G”, said Rui Aguiar, professor at the Lisbon Telecommunications Institute and president of the Networld 2020 platform, to which Huawei belongs.
However, these decisions will be the responsibility of the next European Commission. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)