Well-known Chinese news site Sina (NASDAQ: SINA) recently reported that, ever since the last batch of a shipments of 120 million high-end chips from Taiwan last December, Huawei’s mobile phone sales have been in freefall, income growth reached a record low and cash flow reached a seven-year low. Huawei’s board changed its strategy from “technology orientation” to “survival orientation.” In addition to getting into the cloud computing business, Huawei is partnering with Chinese-owner Seres, an electric vehicle and component manufacturer headquartered in Santa Clara, California, to make electric vehicles (EVs). Huawei’s online shopping site recently presold 3,000 Seres EVs in two days, while Tesla China was combating questionable consumer complaints. Starting in June 2020, Huawei conducted a re-organization and established the structure of an EV branch. The Huawei Smart Car Solutions Business Unit (BU) now has nine departments, including Architecture and Integration; Strategy and Development; Policy, Standards and Patents; Marketing; MDC (Mobile Data Computing); Quality Control and Operations. The BU branch plans to have three product lines: Smart Driving, Smart Cabin, and Smart Automobile Cloud. All heads of the departments of this BU come from Huawei’s top leadership team. The initial BU has around one thousand staff members and the goal is to expand to five to six thousand. Huawei also aims to produce a world-leading car operating system to compete against Tesla, Apple and Google. However, the company is facing a difficulty in finding manufacturing partners in the EV industry.
Source: Sina, April 30, 2021
http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2021-04-30/doc-ikmxzfmk9802173.shtml