The Huawei phone brand leads when it comes to phones running on android and it has provided a competent alternative for smartphone users who want something different from Apple and iOS. Huawei phones belong to the high-end android category with some of the best features available in the market.
Today, we will look at the man who founded and heads Huawei. He comes from a humble beginning, worked various interesting jobs before settling down to start Huawei.
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Meet Ren Zhengfei who started Huawei with a $3000 seed capital
The global smartphone brand, Huawei, was founded in 1987 with a paltry sum of $3,000. The company was started by a young man from a rural family where both parents were school teachers. In 1963, he studied at the Chongqing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture. After his graduation, he moved on to work in a civil engineering company and then in the oil sector before resigning to start his own company.
Founding Huawei
Ren Zhengfei founded Huawei technologies with a seed capital of $3,000 in 1987 after he resigned from his job as a logistics manager in the oil industry. His first business was a total flop, a small state-owned enterprise with 20 employees; but Ren never stopped trying.
His second attempt proved successful when he strung together a group of investors and invested in Huawei technologies in Shenzhen, China.
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They first started out by selling telephone switch equipment procured in Hong Kong before transforming into a full-blown tech company. Today, the smartphone hub has ballooned into a conglomerate, doing business in over 170 countries and employing a mammoth 180,000 employees.
Huawei and the 5G network controversy
Early last year, Huawei was caught up in the midst of a business controversy with the UK government. The UK government deemed it a security risk due to its high-speed 5G technology and banned it.
Reading from the government’s official press release on the issue, the UK government represented by its Digital Secretary, Oliver Dowden, stated, “By the time of the next election, we will have implemented in law, an irreversible path for the complete removal of Huawei equipment from our 5G networks.”
The UK government claimed the decision to do this was advised by the National Security Council (NSC) chaired by the Prime Minister.
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Ren Zhengfei ’s net worth
Zhengfei is currently worth $1.4 billion, according to Forbes. Huawei Group’s revenue rose 3.8% year-on-year to US$136.7 billion, according to SCMP.
The Android software has a total of 2.5 billion active users in the world today, according to The Verge, and Huawei is in the driver’s seat of the android family.
