Huawei Technologies
Huawei is a Chinese information and communications technology (ICT) company that specializes in telecommunications equipment. The company also offers services and consumer electronics including wearables, mobile broadband modems, smartphones, tablets and PCs.
A global partnership with DataCore Software announced in 2015 marked Huawei’s entry to the hyper-converged infrastructure market with products to be based on Huawei hardware and DataCore's virtual SAN (VSAN) software.
With over 170,000 employees, Huawei is the largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment in the world. Over 80 percent of major telecoms in 50 countries around the world have worked with Huawei. Nevertheless, some Western companies raise concerns that the company's ties to the Chinese government could lead to a risk of cyberspying, industrial espionage or sabotage.
Huawei is not officially defined as a private company but as an employee-owned collective. Although there are doubts as to the truth of this claim, that status has helped the company gain many government contracts.
Huawei was founded by Ren Zhengfei in 1987. Shengfei was formerly an engineer with the People's Liberation Army. Corporate headquarters are in Shenzhen, China. The company maintains research and development (R&D) institues in many countries including Belgium, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Pakistan, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Huawei, pronounced hwah-way, comes from Chinese characters that may be translated as Chinese achievement.