Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (/ˈhw'ah']ˌweɪ/; Chinese: 华为; pinyin: Huáwéi) is a Chinese multinational networking, telecommunications equipment, and services company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong. It is the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, having overtaken Ericsson in 2012. In 2017, Huawei became 83rd of Fortune Global 500 in Fortune Magazine.
Huawei was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, a former engineer in the People's Liberation Army. At the time of its establishment, Huawei focused on manufacturing phone switches, but has since expanded its business to include building telecommunications networks, providing operational and consulting services and equipment to enterprises inside and outside of China, and manufacturing communications devices for the consumer market. Huawei has over 170,000 employees as of September 2015, around 76,000 of whom are engaged in research and development (R&D). It has 21 R&D institutes in countries including China, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom,Pakistan, Finland, France, Belgium, Germany, Colombia, Sweden, Ireland, India, Russia, Israel, and Turkey and in 2014, the company invested $6.4 billion USD in R&D, up from $5 billion USD in 2013.
In 2014, Huawei recorded a profit of 34.2 billion CNY (5.5 billion USD). Its products and services have been deployed in more than 170 countries and it currently serves 45 of the world's 50 largest telecoms operators.
In June 2016, Huawei is reportedly working on and designing its own mobile OS for future usage.
From July to September 2017, Huawei surpassed Apple and became the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world after Samsung.
In September 2017, Huawei created an NB-IoT city-aware network using a "one network, one platform, N applications" construction model utilizing IoT, cloud computing, big data, and other next-generation information and communications technology (ICT), it also aims to be one of the world's five largest cloud players in the near future.
