BARCELONA, Spain — Huawei Technologies announced a global strategy Tuesday to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) go digital, pledging to increase investments in products geared towards the business segment as it seeks new areas of growth in the face of blacklisting by Western nations concerned about cybersecurity and escalating tensions with the US over TikTok, spy balloons and computer chips.

The announcement about the focus on SMEs was made at the Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2023 (MWC23) — the world’s biggest wireless trade fair, where Huawei has taken the opportunity to show its muscle, dominating the conference.

“For this year, one of our new strategy is towards the SME market,” Bob Chen, vice-president, enterprise business, Huawei Technologies, told journalist in a press briefing at the MWC23 on Tuesday.

“In the past we would just focus on the large enterprises. Actually, in 2022 only 2,000 large enterprises did business with Huawei. But we know that SMEs also need digital transformation. So we are thinking that they need whole ICT opportunities and Huawei will see how far it can take them,” Chen added. He pointed out that in China alone there are 40 million SMEs.

Huawei has already developed more than 100 solutions for a wide range of industry scenarios. It also showcased about 100 more that are in the research stage.

Chen said Huawei will be pushing partner-centricity as it systematises end-to-end capabilities in R&D (research and development), marketing, sales, supply, and services. So far, Huawei has established global commercial and distribution businesses to further its ambition, including six distribution product R&D teams.

“We want to work with our partners to build better relationships so the company can take advantage of matching sales, supply and the services…to help SMEs go digital. I guess you’d say this is our big target,” Chen continued.

He said with the last year being a difficult one for the tech industry as a whole, and his company in particular, Huawei, took the time “to enhance our understanding for industries and not rest”.

Last year Huawei launched its Empower Programme with a view to grow by solving the challenges of different industries striving to go digital, even as it faces bans of its equipment in the phone networks of the US, Canada, the EU, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

Brian Chamberlin, executive adviser at Huawei’s wireless carrier group, said “the sanctions have had a big impact”, but the company is “not going to try to break any of those rules”.

“But at the same time, that’s not going to slow us down from delivering innovation, innovative solutions,” he said at the expo.

“We will continue to do business with companies and countries that want our support.”

Chen estimated that Huawei’s sales revenue is expected to reach CNY636.9 billion (US$91.86 billion) in 2022, adding that its enterprise business has maintained rapid growth. But its 2022 revenues is almost identical to the CNY636.8 billion (US$91.85 billion) its annual report said it made a year before, suggesting the sanctions have hurt the global growth of the company which still makes 65 per cent of its revenues in China, but has ambitions to become a global powerhouse.

The US three years ago successfully pushed European allies like Britain and Sweden to ban or restrict Huawei equipment in their phone networks over fears Beijing could use it for cybersnooping or sabotaging critical communications infrastructure — allegations Huawei has denied repeatedly. Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have taken similar action. Jamaica also faces similar pressure with the telcos network built on Huawei technology.

However, if the sanctions are hurting, it was hard to tell based on Huawei’s presence at the MWC23. There are seven exhibition halls at the conference catering for 2,000 exhibitors and sponsors, of which Chinese companies make up 150. Huawei Technologies, however, has the biggest presence.

The smartphone and network equipment maker expanded its footprint by 50 per cent from last year and is taking up almost an entire vast exhibition hall at Barcelona’s Fira convention centre, organisers said. It also takes up locations in other halls as well as hotels. Other exhibitors occupy little more than booths.

Huawei’s displays seems to be showing the world it’s pivoting away from mainly making networking gear and becoming an all-round tech supplier. From 5G to 6G, Huawei was displaying solutions touching every aspect of modern society — transport, telecoms, health care, education, manufacturing, and even household tech.

The company is reinventing itself by supplying hardware and software for cargo ports, self-driving cars, factories and other industries it hopes are less vulnerable to sanctions, and has gone on an aggressive drive to market these products to governments and industries across the world with a message that there is nothing to fear from its technology.

“The best thing Huawei has been able to do is to demonstrate openness and transparency,” Paul Scanlan, chief technology officer at Huawei Carrier Network Business Group, told the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday.

Scanlan declined to be dragged into more questions on the geopolitical tensions which have been affecting Huawei. But he said he chairs an advisory committee in Huawei that has spent US$2.5 billion over the last four years to rewrite the capabilities of its software to assure there is no spying.

“The committee includes a little bit of Huawei, but it includes 12 global operators at the highest level, as well as three of the top experts in cyber security and software architecture…I can show you who wrote the software, every line of code he wrote and what it does, and the next guy who checked it and committed it to memory, the next guy who tested it and any evolution or revolution or combination of those all the way through to putting it on a piece of silicon chip and put it in a base station or in a product of Huawei, and I can show you that and try and trace the transparent component to any cybersecurity person or Government in the world. And we’re the only company in the world who can do that. We are the only company that is prepared to do that. And we’ve had to do these things to demonstrate this,” Scanlan pointed out.

He questioned why other tech companies have not done the same or come under similar scrutiny when they are not as transparent as Huawei.

“What Huawei is trying to do is, we’re trying to demonstrate this openness and transparency. And we’re not asking you whether you should believe it because we’re open and transparent. We’re not saying that at all. We’re inviting you to have a look at what we have been doing for the last 30 years. And say this is our credentials. These are our credentials. This is what we have done.”

“You don’t make US$100 billion by stealing. You don’t make US$100 billion by negating somebody’s trust. And I think that’s what we’ve been demonstrating,” he said in reference to Huawei’s revenues, generously rounding up the figures presented in the financials.

Scanlan said under the pressure, Huawei is proactively engaging governments and industry players to talk about its transparency and inviting them to make the assessment themselves. He said Huawei’s history demonstrates it can be trusted.