Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker was founded in 1987 by a former deputy director of the People’s Liberation Army engineering corp named Ren Zhengfei. China had an underdeveloped telecommunications network and almost 100% of the telecommunications technology was imported from abroad.
Ren Zhengfei hoped to raise a domestic telecommunication empire which would be far superior to its foreign competitors.In its initial years, Huawei was investing heavily in R&D and also reselling Private Branch Exchange Switches to villages and towns. Its first major breakthrough came in 1993 when it developed C&C08 program controlled telephone switch which was the most powerful switch in the country at that time.After that the road got easier for Huawei.
It was offered to build the first national telecommunications network for the People’s Liberation Army. The Government decided to adopt a policy of supporting domestic telecommunications manufactures and restricting import of foreign brands which gave a tremendous boost to Huawei.Presently, Huawei has R&D institutes in countries including China, the United States, Canada, UK, Pakistan, France, Germany, Colombia, Sweden, Ireland, India, Russia, and Turkey.
