USChina Tech War: Huawei Counts On 5Gpowered Tianjin Port To Redefine Its Enterprise Business To Survive Crushing Trade Sanctions
- Port cranes, cranes, stackers and trucks are controlled by the Tianjin Port Smart Center, miles away from the command center.
- Smart Gates can move 36 boxes per hour at 20 feet per hour, faster than human-controlled moving equipment, requiring only a quarter of the original digital workforce.
The route crosses two worlds through the northern Chinese port of Tianjin. On the right-of-way, crane operators sit in cabs 50 meters (160 feet) above the ground and maneuver freight containers between trucks and ships at a rate of 28 to 30 boxes per hour.
Terminal C, on the left side of the aisle, is the Tianjin Port Smart Hub, a fully digital and automated port where the port's cranes, dredges and barges are controlled miles from the command center. With Huawei Technologies' 5G telecom infrastructure, the smart port can move 36 20-foot containers (TEU) per hour, much faster than humans.
Yang Zemin, vice president of Tianjin Port Group, said during a visit to the South China Morning Post that digitization is "an industry trend, not only for Chinese ports, but for all ports in the world." "Our goal is to build a digital twin at Tianjin Port in the next three to five years."
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The Tianjin port is a showcase for Huawei's state-of-the-art technology as the world's largest phone network equipment maker recovers from nearly four years of heavy-handed US sanctions that once crippled its smartphone business and forced it to import all of its communications equipment from North America. , Europe and Australia.
© Provided by South China Morning Post. A view of a container pier in Tianjin Port. The human controlled bed is on the right side of the road and fully automatic.In the year The Shenzhen coal mining giant, which had 195,000 people in 2021 and the world's largest research budget behind even Google and Microsoft, is introducing 5G-enabled digital services to modernize its infrastructure. China: Ports and hospitals too.
The advantages of automation are obvious. A staff of 200 operators and engineers can handle 1 million TEU per year at Tianjin Terminal C, 25 percent of the workforce needed in a normal year in the pre-digital era. More to come. Artificial intelligence (AI) for congestion prediction, big data analytics for driving trends, and self-driving trucks will all rely on high-speed 5G connections.
"Made in China 2025" China sees 5G as the gateway to the Industrial Internet.
Donald Trump Huawei was handed over to the head of the US government when he took over the White House in 2017. In the year A security audit conducted by the Obama administration in 2012 found no evidence that Huawei was spying on the Chinese government, although security flaws in its products raised concerns. Customers.
But Trump In 2018, it banned telecommunications equipment made by Huawei and ZTE from U.S. government networks, citing national security concerns, and placed them on a restricted export list a year later, barring access to U.S. equipment and software. .
As the US tightens access to Huawei's key technologies, the company's smartphone business, which in 2018 overtook Apple to become the world's second-largest smartphone maker, has come under intense pressure. Released from Google's Android operating system and its core components, Huawei's budget smartphone has sold its work for Honor in 2020, which is the key behind its impressive success.
Huawei in the competition between America and China
Huawei then moved on to its core enterprise business, providing customers with new data-rich products and services that enable their use and reliance on 5G telecom infrastructure.
To lead the effort, the company created so-called "legions," a reference to the military term favored by founder Ren Zhengfei, who served in the People's Liberation Army. These inter-agency business units have been established to help clients digitize their products and services in the mining, customs and ports, energy storage centers, smart highways and photovoltaic industries.
Last June, Huawei added five legions, bringing the total to 20. Although Huawei did not disclose details about each legion, Li Junfeng, CEO of Airports and Roads Legion, said it is looking forward to the digitization of Huawei's transportation.
“Airports and roads are also basic infrastructures that are difficult to bring to overseas markets. "So we don't have plans for international expansion in the short term, but we will make some changes next year," Lee said last November. Securities Times, Government Finance Newspaper.
Huawei has high hopes that such industrial infrastructure can turn into a sustainable source of revenue, at least domestically, although the company refuses to make public the financial details of its applications.
Huawei's efforts to forge closer ties with traditional industries are based on its previous work with private enterprises around the world, using 5G connectivity and computing power to automate and improve various verticals, said Matthew Ball, principal analyst at Canalys Research Institute.
"Overall, this is a continuation of what Huawei has been doing for years, even before the US sanctions, especially as the enterprise business is vertically oriented to provide solutions for the entire portfolio," Ball said. "His smartphone business just got more attention."
It remains to be seen whether Huawei can survive US sanctions, especially given the Chinese giant's reluctance in the West to give it access to data and network infrastructure contracts that could potentially lead to national security concerns. In the year After being blacklisted by former President Trump in May 2019, the company made major changes, barring it from doing business with US partners without special permission.
In his New Year's address, Huawei acting president Eric Xu said the company is out of "crisis mode" and ready to return to "business" in 2023. The bleeding stopped after the company posted a preliminary revenue of 636.9 billion yuan. $93.8 billion) for 2022, little changed from last year.
Pressure on Huawei continues following Trump's re-election bid defeat. Last month, it emerged that the Joe Biden administration was considering shutting down all of Huawei's US suppliers, including Intel and Qualcomm, which make critical semiconductor chips for the Chinese company's telecommunications equipment.
Huawei has published its annual financial results since 2000, although they are not subject to public disclosure regulations, a competitive practice among public telecommunications networks.
According to his results.
Its consumer business, mostly smartphones and gadgets, has been hampered by a lack of access to new chips. At one time, Huawei was the world's largest mobile phone seller, ahead of Apple and Samsung Electronics, but now it is not in the top five. In the year In the third quarter of 2022, they finally ran out of smaller semiconductors built for it at home. Mobile devices.
Huawei's carrier division, a once-dominant telecom equipment business, has weakened as Chinese carriers slowly complete network upgrades. In the year In 2021, Huawei's business revenue was 40% lower than in 2019, when China began rolling out 5G infrastructure.
Thus, the corporate segment remains the only growing segment with a revenue growth of 2.1% in 2022, although it still accounts for less than one-sixth of total sales. In the year In early 2021, Huawei's founder Ren said that the company should give priority to cloud computing, and the company has personally confirmed the cooperation with the coal mining industry.
The company is developing special 5G mobile base stations for the coal mining industry that are resistant to dust, moisture and shock wave blasts. These devices are expected to support stable and fast uploading of data from drones, sensors and high-resolution cameras.
Huawei and other technology companies will bring digital transformation in China's coal industry
The mining industry will be the first to implement a model in which scientists and experts from various corporate departments come up with solutions to industry problems, he said in 2021 in Taiwan, the capital of Shanxi Province.
Improving the end-user experience, real-time processing of large amounts of data, and the operation, maintenance and management of complex networks will be challenges for the financial industry, CEO Cao Chong said in a speech in June. . According to Securities Times, from Huawei Digital Financial Legion.
Huawei has entered the electric vehicle (EV) sector by partnering with Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer Ceres to introduce the popular iTo car brand. However, competition in China is strong, and Huawei ranks sixth among Chinese electric vehicle startups with sales of 76,180 units by the end of 2022. The company is partnering with several automakers that supply components for smart cars.
Huawei's business changes are visible to users. On the floor of the flagship store in Shenzhen, a three-story building, during a recent visit, customers approached several Aito vehicles and asked sales representatives about the vehicle's specifications and available discounts. At the other end of the exhibition hall, the latest Huawei smartphones and tablets were displayed on long wooden tables.
While analysts are generally optimistic about Huawei's new business, the digital transformation is not expected to bring a short-term revolution. "Venture capital should grow rapidly over the next 5 to 10 years," said Evan Lam, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research.
But the constant threat of U.S. sanctions remains Huawei's biggest obstacle, Lam said, especially for applications that require advanced computing power, such as smartphones, servers and automotive components.
"Huawei has never treated the existing sanctions as final and in many ways has never been prepared for new restrictions, such as the introduction of domestic technologies," Lam said. "We expect Huawei to take advantage of these efforts in the coming years and close the key technology gap."
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This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), a leading news outlet covering events in China and Asia.
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