Ren Zhengfei, CEO and founder of Chinese tech, Huawei defends Apple from retaliatory actions from Beijing as tensions between the US and the embattled company escalate in the trade war.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television, the CEO said he will oppose any retaliatory move against its US rival, Apple. Instead of a clap back, it would either expand its own chip supplies or find other alternatives to maintain in relevance in smartphones and 5G technology. He said in an interview:
“That will not happen, first of all. And second of all, if that happens, I’ll be the first to protest. Apple is my teacher, it’s in the lead. As a student, why go against my teacher? Never.”
The Chinese owned company has had too much to deal with of late. It started with tariff hikes; then came the blacklist, with the US government getting its allies to also turn their backs on the embattled firm. Android announced its disengagement; other American companies followed suit. Mobile tech operators in japan and other countries are yet to rollout the new models of the Huawei smartphones.
The US government included the Chinese owned tech firm in a blacklist, after accusations of having possible ties with Beijing in military espionage. President Trump pronounced an order that prohibits Huawei from obtaining supplies from American tech firms, except there is an approval from the US government. The ban rids Huawei of the opportunity to take a position at the forefront of the global economy. The tech firm recently become second behind Samsung after it overtook Apple in the smartphone sales.
Not only will the ban disrupt the roll up of 5G technology globally, the device is on its way to attract the international market less. Yet, the 5G technology is a standard touted for everything from self-drive cars to AI. The absence of Google, Netflix, WhatsApp, Play store and the other apps in a devise equates to an “unsmartphone”. Imaging starting from the root to build an Operating System to run phones and servers, an IM app and its own chips. Ren maintains that the tech firm is capable of building all these, save for the time they will have to spend. The firm says it’s been building its own OS which will run on its smartphones and servers, and that in fact, it already has its own chips which is currently in use on its smartphones.
However, he deviated from responding to the questions that bother on how soon the company can accelerate the replacement process. Failure to accomplish this feat could dent the growing consumer business. He responded:
“That depends on how fast our repairmen are able to fix the plane. No matter what materials they use, be it metal, cloth or paper, the aim is to keep the plane in the sky.”