Huawei Technologies Co (華為) has replaced more than 13,000 parts in its products that were hit by US trade sanctions, the Chinese tech giant’s founder said, according to a speech transcript from last month posted on Friday by a Chinese university.
Ren Zhengfei (任正非) said Huawei had over the past three years replaced the 13,000 components with domestic Chinese substitutes, and had redesigned 4,000 circuit boards for its products, the transcript posted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University said.
“As of now, our circuit board [production] has stabilized, because we have a supply of domestically produced components,” Ren said.
Photo: Reuters
He did not give details about which specific parts were being sourced from within China or what proportion of Huawei’s total supply they represented.
Since 2019, Huawei, a major supplier of equipment used in 5G telecommunications networks, has been the target of successive rounds of US export controls.
Ren made the remarks in a talk to Chinese technology experts on Feb. 24, the transcript said.
Ren said there were still “difficulties with manufacturing advanced microchips in China, so we have to find other ways of making up ground.”
Huawei spent US$23.8 billion on research and development last year, and plans to invest more in the coming years as profits rise, he added.
“We’re still in a difficult period, but have not stopped on the road towards progress,” Ren said.
The founder said the company had built its own enterprise resource planning system, called MetaERP. With an expected launch next month, it is to help run Huawei’s core business functions, including finance, supply chain and manufacturing operations.
Ren said Huawei has no plans to launch a rival to the popular large language model ChatGPT, but said Microsoft Corp, the backer of the application’s developer, OpenAI, would not be the only dominant player.
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