In 2021, Huawei invested in R&D (an analogue of research and development, R&D) the maximum amount in five years – $ 22.1 billion. It is reported by Bloomberg .
Moreover, among IT companies, this is the largest amount invested in R&D in relation to profit. Huawei even overtook the top five MMAAA, i.e. Meta (an organization recognized as a terrorist organization in the Russian Federation), Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Alphabet (the parent company of Google), since these $ 22.1 billion is more than 22.4% of all Huawei’s income :
However, this amount is still less than what companies from this same MMAAA invest in R&D. Huawei was very close to Microsoft, which only invested $100 million more. Amazon was the leader with a fabulous $56 billion:
Over the past five years, Huawei has doubled its contribution to R&D. But this is not a record either. For example, Meta more than quadrupled R&D spending. But the increase in the budget for the development of Microsoft does not look so impressive:
The need for development from Huawei is long overdue: the company came under tough sanctions from the US and the EU. This closed the company’s markets in some countries, as well as access to fifth generation networks. And the company understood quite adequate things:
The problems that Huawei is currently facing cannot be solved by cutting costs. Huawei cannot acquire advanced technology, we must increase investment in technology development.
Head of the Supervisory Board of Huawei
However, the amount invested does not mean that in a couple of years the company will be able to produce devices that are 100% composed exclusively of Huawei technologies.
The bottom line is that most of the technologies on which various devices are produced are the property of companies based anywhere but not in China. According to an IC Insights report , 54% of IC manufacturing and licensing companies are based in the US, 22% in South Korea, 9% in Taiwan, and 6% each in Japan and the EU. Only 4% of all these companies are based in China. And here it is absolutely unimportant where exactly the factories are based, since the technologies do not belong to them, but to the headquarters, which choose countries with a transparent and safe business policy for the location. China cannot boast of such a thing.
Another point is the size of technology. Take the Hisilicon Kirin system-on-a-chip that Huawei is developing. It would seem that these “stones” are the property of the company, other countries cannot influence the development. But let’s take the flagship Kirin 9000. The CPU of this system-on-a-chip consists of four Cortex-A77 cores, as well as four Cortex-A55 cores. These cores are developed and licensed by ARM Holdings, the UK company responsible for the development of the ARM architecture. And the system-on-a-chip is one of the largest and, it seems, the most important of all elements of computers, tablets and smartphones.
Theoretically, Huawei could start developing its own architecture, for example, becoming interested in open RISC-V, but such changes cost much more than $ 22 billion a year. The company really wants to reduce its reliance on other countries’ technology to produce its devices. But only “reduce dependence” is not the same as “doing it completely on our own”, because now nothing can be done without global relationships in the IT world.
