Microblogs: No Holiday For Huawei, Xiaomi’s OS Hint
Most of China may have taken a holiday during last week’s 3-day Mid Autumn Festival, but it was all work for networking equipment giant Huawei as it used the time to host a global IT forum in Holland. Xu Wenwei, head of Huawei’s enterprise division, used his microblog to hype the event, which looks like the company’s latest effort to convince the world that it’s a global company and not just another maker of cheap “made in China” goods. Meantime, the chatty Lei Jun took time out from his Mid Autumn holiday to drop the latest hint that Xiaomi, the fast-rising smartphone maker he co-founded, is developing its own mobile operating system (OS) that could someday compete with rival products from Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)
Let’s start with Huawei, which staged its Huawei IT Leaders Forum last Wednesday in Amsterdam, just as China was preparing to take its 3-day holiday for the family-oriented Mid Autumn Festival. Xu’s presence at the forum comes as Huawei hopes to build up its enterprise business, in a bid to diversify beyond its traditional business of building large networks for mobile telcos.
Xu tweeted that the conference was attended by more than 120 chief information officers (CIOs) from around the world, and that the event was also being transmitted via the Internet. While most of his chatter was promotional, the event’s timing during the Mid Autumn Festival period and location in an international city like Amsterdam both seemed to have significant overtones. Both decisions seemed aimed at reinforcing Huawei’s recent campaign to show the world it’s an international company and not just a spying arm of Beijing. Western Europe is fast emerging as the epicenter of this new campaign, which after Washington’s controversial decision last year to ban Huawei from selling its networking equipment in the US.
Earlier this year, Huawei also announced a series of major new investments in Britain, one of its oldest and most lucrative global markets. (previous post) I have to give Huawei credit for crafting a focused, smart looking campaign to boost its global image. That effort includes not only global investments and events, but also the hiring of a wide range of foreigners into its ranks and inclusion of foreign participants at its events. If it keeps up the effort, it could well succeed in finally quieting the many skeptics who still feel it is an arm of the Chinese government.
From Huawei, let’s look quickly at the latest comments from Lei Jun, which follow recent rumors that the company is developing its own mobile OS that could someday compete with Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. (previous post) Xiaomi hasn’t confirmed or denied the rumors, but Lei seemed to hint that such a product could be in the works in one of his latest microblog posts.
The post is actually a re-post from one of Xiaomi’s senior engineers, who notes how Chinese-made OSs are receiving a warm reception but also questions whether most of these are really homegrown Chinese products. His thoughts seem to reference the fact that many so-called homegrown Chinese operating systems are really just variants of Android, which is free to anyone who wants to develop their own software based on the platform.
Lei mostly repeats the engineer’s thoughts in his own addition to the tweet, with the implication being that Chinese firms have yet to product an OS that is truly made in China. Development of such an OS would certainly be consistent with Xiaomi’s bigger strategy of creating an ecosystem of products such as smartphones, smart TVs and tablet PCs that can be interlinked. Look for more of these suggestive posts that have become one of Lei’s standard marketing tactics, before Xiaomi perhaps formally announces its OS sometime next year.
Bottom line: Huawei’s latest European event is part of its campaign to appear more global, while Xiaomi’s latest hint implies it may unveil a self-developed OS next year.
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