Growth-Addicted Huawei Looks to the Cloud 华为渴求增长上瘾着眼云计算

By newsdoug on April 28, 2011

While growth is generally good, it seems to have become an addiction for telecoms equipment superstar Huawei Technologies. After recently saying it would develop IT services to maintain its stellar growth as its manufacturing business matures, a Huawei exec has come out and said the company aims to boost sales another 200 percent over the next 5-10 years. (English article) The executive went on to say that Huawei’s next cash cow would lie in providing IT services in the enterprise and cloud computing spaces. Huawei's head stuck in the cloud While I admire Huawei for wanting to keep posting triple-digit growth (heaven forbid they should slip into double digits!), it does in many ways feel like this company has become obsessed with growth at any cost and may be losing its common sense. I’m not saying it can’t make such a transition — after all, IBM (NYSE: IBM) made such a move, and HP (NYSE: HPQ) is moving in that direction. But given that such transitions can be difficult — Lenovo (HKEx: 992) tried and failed at a similar move less than a decade ago — Huawei and rival ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063) might be better advised to focus on developing new products that take advantage of their expertise as low-cost, quality manufacturers.

Bottom line: Huawei needs to give up its obsession with triple-digit growth and focus its energies on manufacturing of low-cost, quality telecoms products.

虽然一般来说增长是好事，但对於电信设备生产领域的明星公司华为来说，它对增长的渴望好像上了瘾。华为刚刚表示要发展IT服务业务，以保持强劲增长趋势之後，一位高管又站出来说，华为打算在未来5-10年把销售再增加200%。这位高管继续说，华为下一个现金增长源头将取决於IT服务业务和云计算。虽然我敬佩华为想要保持三位数增长的愿望（但愿不会下滑到两位数！），但从很多方面都能感觉到，这家公司已经到了不计代价寻求增长的地步，并可能会丢掉常识。我并不是说这家公司不能做出这样的转型—毕竟IBM<IBM.N>已经转型了，惠普<HPQ.N>也正在朝这个方向转型。但考虑到这种转型可能不容易—联想<0992.HK>不到十年前的类似尝试以失败告终—华为和中兴通讯<000063.SZ> <0763.HK> 也许更应该把精力集中在开发新产品，充分利用其在低成本、高质量电信产品方面的技术优势更好。

一句话：华为应该放弃对三位数增长的狂热，集中精力制造物美价廉的电信产品。

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