Last Week, Eric Xu, the Huawei Rotating Chairman noted the optimization of its portfolio as a key step towards boosting business resilience to cope with the uncertainty brought by geopolitical tension, the resurgence of COVID-19, and the co-current US bans.

Eric Xu made the statement while delivering a keynote speech at the company’s 18th Global Analyst Summit attended by over 400 guests. These included industry and financial analysts, key opinion leaders, and media representatives, who joined the 3-day event run under the theme “Building a Fully Connected, Intelligent World“.

 “Business resilience is our guiding principle. We want to boost the resilience of our entire business, and since last year we have been working to optimize our portfolio with this goal in mind,”

said Eric Xu

Huawei’s 2020 Annual Report shows the company’s sales revenue in 2020 rounded off at CNY891.4 billion, up 3.8% year-on-year, and its net profit reached CNY64.6 billion, up 3.2% year-on-year.

Eric Xu said one of the priorities is to further strengthen Huawei’s software engineering capabilities

“We’re on the lookout for new business opportunities in the software sector. When we find the right fit, we will step up investment to increase the percentage of software and services in our revenue mix,”

Added Eric Xu.

In late November 2018, Huawei decided to invest 2 billion US dollars into upgrading our software engineering capabilities. Eric Xu said the company is “pleased with the results thus far”.

Autonomous driving software is one of the main focuses of the company software investment plan. According to Eric Xu, autonomous driving software is at the center of entirely unmanned driving.

“With intense investment in autonomous driving software, our hope is to drive these trends forward as they facilitate the integration of the automotive and ICT industries, which in turn creates long-term strategic opportunities for Huawei. Once unmanned driving becomes a reality, we will see disruption in practically all adjacent sectors and trigger the most disruptive industry transformation the world will see in the next 10 years,”

said the Rotating Chairman.

Despite operational difficulties brought about by US sanctions in 2019 and 2020, Huawei has continued to invite KPMG to independently and objectively audit our financial statements. The document produced by KPMG is a standard unmodified audit opinion. No matter the circumstances, we will continue to embrace transparency by disclosing operational data to governments, customers, suppliers, employees, and partners.

In 2020, Huawei’s carrier business continued to ensure the stable operations of more than 1,500 networks across more than 170 countries and regions, which helped support telework, online learning, and online shopping throughout COVID-19 lockdowns. Working together with carriers around the world, the company helped provide a superior connected experience and moved forward with more than 3,000 5G innovation projects in over 20 industries like coal mining, steel production, ports, and manufacturing.

Over the past year, Huawei’s enterprise business stepped up efforts to develop innovative scenario-based solutions for different industries and create a digital ecosystem that thrives on joint creation and shared success.

During the pandemic, Huawei provided technical expertise and solutions that were vital in the fight against the virus. One example is an AI-assisted diagnostic solution based on HUAWEI CLOUD that helped hospitals the world over reduce the burden on their medical infrastructure. Huawei also worked with partners to launch cloud-based online learning platforms for more than 50 million primary and secondary school students.

With the rollout of HarmonyOS and the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) ecosystem, Huawei’s consumer business moved forward with its Seamless AI Life strategy (“1 + 8 + N”) to provide consumers with an intelligent experience across all devices and scenarios, focusing on smart office, fitness & health, smart home, easy travel, and entertainment.

“Over the past year we’ve held strong in the face of adversity, We’ve kept innovating to create value for our customers, to help fight the pandemic, and to support both economic recovery and social progress around the world. We also took this opportunity to further enhance our operations, leading to a performance that was largely in line with forecast.”

said Ken Hu, Huawei’s Rotating Chairman.

“We will continue to work closely with our customers and partners to support social progress, economic growth, and sustainable development.”

All financial statements in the 2020 Annual Report were independently audited by KPMG, an international Big Four accounting firm. To download the 2020 Annual Report, visit https://www.huawei.com/en/annual-report/2020

EDITOR’s NOTE: Part of this story is from an official press release shared with the Tech Point Magazine team.

During the Huawei Cloud & AI Forum at the recently concluded online AfricaCom 2020 event, part of the Africa Tech Festival that run from November 9^th to 13th. Lulu noted the aggregated use of Huawei cloud in improving the uptime and reliability of Afrishop.

Having launched its portal supported by Huawei Cloud to provide convenient online shopping, affordable logistics, and courier services. Afrishop aims at creating a more convenient and affordable delivery service for consumers looking for quality goods from China.

The Afrishop taste of uptime on Huawei cloud

In its launch and development stages, Afrishop got support from Huawei Cloud Infrastructure and Huawei AppGallery –– the app store on non-Google management services (GMS) Huawei smartphones.

“We are available on Android and the Apple app store, but our competitive advantage has been that we are available on the Huawei AppGallery for Huawei phones which are widely used in Africa, the partnership with Huawei to push our app in the app store really helped us, and we saw a big uptick in downloads.”

Furthermore, Lulu noted that for a long time, there has been a need for a good supply-chain management system for African consumers. In a bid to address the challenge, Afrishop targets to provide convenience and affordable last-mile delivery right to the customer’s doorstep. 

 “Our main services are online shopping and supply chain management, and our solution is faster, easier, and more convenient than other platforms. Our customers get access both through our app and website, this is because apps don’t have a big uptake in several African regions yet.”

Additionally, Afrishop registered over 10,000 downloads in its first week by leveraging the Huawei cloud support system and has since continued to grow over the past 9 months. So far, the platform is available in Zambia, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, and Angola as noted by Lulu.

Annually, the Huawei Cloud & AI Forum is hosted for the African ICT industry. This year, the forum run under the theme “New Value Together” and with notable case studies from Afrishop, the brand’s cloud services continue to present an opportunity for the growth of Africa’s eCommerce ecosystem.

For eCommerce platforms like Afrishop, the reliability of cloud computing providers like Huawei cloud presents an opportunity to grow. By this standard, providers like Jumia, Kilimall, Gearbest continue to be most preferred by customers across Africa.

Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology Co. Ltd has officially closed a deal to own and run Honor as its flagship smartphone brand. At a yet to be disclosed sale figure estimated to be at 15.2 billion USD, Huawei will nolonger own Honor, but its employee base remains unchanged.

George Zhao, the current President of Huawei’s Honor division, will now be the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Honor as an independent brand owned by Shenzhen Zhixin – a consortium of over 30 agents and dealers in China.

A Joint Statement on the sale of Huawei’s Honor Smartphones Brand

“This acquisition represents a market-driven investment made to save Honor’s industry chain. It is the best solution to protect the interests of Honor’s consumers, channel sellers, suppliers, partners, and employees.

The change in ownership will not impact Honor’s development direction or the stability of its executive and talent teams, allowing the company to continually consolidate its foundation for success.”

The Joint Statement reads

As per the published statement, Huawei’s sale of Honor will improve its stand as a great Smartphone brand, and will no longer be affected by any US sanctions as it has been with its former mother company.

This means, the Honor Smartphones brand will now take on rival bullish players like Vivo, Oppo, Realme, One Plus, Tecno, among other Chinese based brands on a global market scale.

Hence, as Honor moves away from Huawei, the brand will be saved and will now tackle a much wider market across the world since it will not be affected by potential sanctions that would rise under Huawei.

In fact, support for Google management services (GMS) will be valid on Honor devices going forward and will bring together trust from chip suppliers that previously cut business ties with Huawei over U.S trade restrictions.

Nonetheless, the sale of Honor is revenue-in for Huawei, but might cost it a midrange stand with no direct brand in its catalog since its base releases like the Mate 40 serve as top tier high-end releases.

Given the fact that only a pinch of corporate brands deploy CSR campaigns, the need for their involvement would benefit them and their customer base. For instance, In 2020, only MTN has donated through its CSR wing, and no other telco has borrowed the streak.

Henceforth, at the forefront of running CSR campaigns, MTN Uganda’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Wim Vanhelleputte, through an Interview shared his beliefs and take on why CSR is a win-win for both companies and communities alike.

Please tell us about MTN’s rationale for taking part in CSR

At MTN our vision is to provide a modern connected digital life to every customer. However, we understand that as a business, MTN can only flourish when the communities and ecosystems in which it operates are healthy.

In all we do, we strive to leverage our core capabilities to enable the socio-economic development of the communities within which we operate. I think of CSR as a win-win. It is a big win for the company and even a bigger win for the community.

How does MTN execute its CSR? 

CSR is fully embedded in our overall strategy. Every year we donate a certain percentage of our profits through the MTN Foundation. The money is dedicated to improving the lives of people in the communities in the most pressing areas of education, health, and national priority areas such as youth empowerment among others.

 We endeavor to maintain an emphasis on addressing National priority areas aligned with the National Development Plan of each of our markets.

This is why we have strong working partnerships with the health and education sectors, and it is also the reason why we are always quick to come in when there are natural disasters like it was with COVID19, floods in different parts of the country.

It is also a known fact that all the money from the MTN Kampala Marathon goes towards charity. Please tell us more about it.

The idea of the MTN marathon has really been about mobilising the population and other corporate bodies to rally together behind specific causes that require urgent attention in our communities. It has helped us draw attention to very important issues in the community such as maternal health, basic needs like water in some parts of the country.

We take pride in our association with partners like Stanbic Bank, New Vision, Huawei and Rwenzori among others who donate selflessly towards the Marathon and to all the participants who take part in the Marathon to make a difference in people’s lives.

We believe that our vision to build sustainable societies can be achieved through partnerships and collaboration, helping in the realisation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Why is MTN passionate about giving back to the communities?

As explained in the beginning, MTN Uganda can only flourish when the communities and ecosystems in which it operates are healthy. In all we do, we strive to leverage our core capabilities to enable the socio-economic development of the communities within which we operate.

The MTN Marathon is just one tool through which we make our contribution. We also have a foundation whose focus is to carry out our CSI agenda and through it we have been able to do a lot in the community.

Since it is part of MTN’s vision, we expect to see more MTN Initiatives in the community. Briefly tell us about the future of MTN CSR

Definitely just like we have a business plan, we have a solid plan for our CSR. As the communities we work with advance, their needs also evolve. Our CSI program currently focuses on National Priority Areas (Education, Health, women empowerment, disaster relief) and Employee volunteerism and more recently we are adding youth empowerment to the agenda.  

This will focus on empowering them with the relevant skills required in the current times so as to systematically address job creation, enhance competitiveness and drive inclusive growth.

Why particularly the youth?

Youth account for over 60% of the population across our markets.  If we can address the issue of job creation in youths and enable them to be contributors to the growth of their country, this will drive inclusive growth as well as positively impact communities’ standards of living. This strategic move is to really unlock the potential of youths in building the economy.

What are your final remarks to the public regarding giving back to the community?

First of all let me thank everybody out there, whether individual or organisation that is involved in giving back and supporting communities. Development in any form is not a preserve of the government.

It is a collective effort that everybody should get involved in their own little way. As MTN we strongly believe that we are good together, that way we can achieve a lot more.

Editor’s note: Part of this story is from an official Interview release shared with the Tech Point Magazine team

Through the provision of dedicated Internet, centric voice packages, and swift Money transfer with MTN Momo, business owners can have the power to concentrate on growing their business and not worry about communications to the next goal.

The Triple offer encompasses Voice, Internet, and MoMo for businesses making it easy for enterprise customers to run operations effectively by routing through seamless experiences that MTN as a corporate entity is known for in Uganda.

By signing up for the offer, MTN Business customers receive free service installation on fixed voice, discounted Mobile Money transaction fees, and free fixed Internet installations.

To spice up the offer, free subscription for the first month, discounts on monthly subscriptions, free domain registration, and hosting at MTN Data Centers come as additives to the overall package.

According to Ibrahim Ssenyonga, the MTN Business General Manager. Businesses often choose multiple providers for reliability and to lower costs. But with multiple edges, provider management is often a headache with many having different administration tools for business owners.

“At MTN, we believe that it’s better to find a provider who has all the coverage and solutions you need, can be your single point of contact and you can take advantage of economies of scale for not just better pricing, but more efficient delivery as well,” Ssenyonga said.

Additionally, Ssenyonga inked that the recent changes brought up by the current COVID19 Pandemic have taught business owners a new alternate route. Consumers are taking digital as a top priototy, so, this means a new normal for the business ecosystem that has to adopt the new standards.

“COVID19 has changed the way people do things. Businesses that have quickly adopted remote ways of working stand a good chance of survival as more people seek convenience that comes with online trading. This new offer is, therefore, part of MTN’s wider scheme to further consolidate its effort at supporting and enabling SMEs and the business community in Uganda in general,”

Senyoga Added

Well, with a global footprint of empowering partners and customers, the MTN Business offer will give entrepreneurs a new breather to brace packages laid by the telco in Uganda.

With Fiber Connectivity and Broadband Internet as the core Internet package offer, business owners will easily embrace digital with reliable connectivity and a suite of services offered by the telco.

So, the new business offer is one that will pump life into a section of businesses that may have pondered for continuity packages in the current COVID19 Pandemic that has left many

In 2020 alone, the company aimed at dominating 5 key technology sectors including 5G developments, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, and Industry applications as opportunity spicers for the general ICT ecosystem.

At the Connect event, Huawei revealed that going forward, it will focus on applying ICT technologies to industries and provide scenario-specific solutions. In return, this will help enterprises grow their businesses and also help governments achieve their goals of boosting domestic industry growth.

According to Huawei’s Rotating Chairman, Guo Ping, the company will leverage best practices in helping build smart cities, campuses, and enterprises by integrating ICT for swift problem solving.

“ We are creating New Value with Synergy across Five Tech Domains. As more and more governments and enterprises go digital, and embrace intelligence. The ICT sector will see incredible potential for growth. We look forward to opening this new chapter together with our partners.”

Said Huawei Rotating Chairman Guo Ping.

Key Huawei Future Business Domains

Network: Within the networks domain, Huawei aims at Intelligent connectivity to deliver hyper-automated connections that offer super-fast gigabit access, a standard best known for 5G connectivity. When deployed, connectivity will enable intelligent upgrades for major business systems of governments and enterprises.

Computing: As per the computing domain, Huawei is committed to providing diverse computing power to its partners and customers through decoupling software from hardware to adapt its compute to different processing needs, including x86 and Kunpeng architectural standards.

Cloud: Actively, Huawei has established 23 data center regions worldwide. Through these, over 1.5million developers have been attracted to work and develop new generation technologies such as Hongmeng/Harmony OS that facilitate fast ICT developments.

Artificial Intelligence: AI as the new vast competition sector, Huawei aims to better integrate into major business systems of governments and enterprises using data to build core competence for AI systems.

All in All, Huawei is cementing its future plans by further bridging its competitive space in 5G, cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence. Even with current US sanctions in-sight, the ICT giant will continue crunching its capabilities to widen its partner offering in several countries worldwide.

It’s through Digital that many businesses now continue to survive as Entrepreneurs also devise new paths to bridge Ideas by leveraging available models. A successful instance of an Idea born from the pandemic is Paws Uganda.

Paws 4 Uganda is an online Pet store that was founded by two budding pet enthusiasts, Mitchel Mwesiga and Warren Muzoora. The former discovered passion after acquiring a great pet breed from the latter who had enjoyed the comfort of being one of Uganda’s prominent breeders for quality bloodlines before the Pandemic period.

Influenced by the Pandemic driven lockdown, The duo of Entrepreneurs chose to turn their mutual passion for Dogs into a solution to connect Dog lovers (owners and passion would-be owners) to quality Information and services including: dog acquisition, nutrition, grooming, accessories and skills training.

With limited access to high population zones, the duo based their solution on serving Isolated customers who not only have limited reach to pet stores, but would love to acquire quality breeds of Man’s all-time best friend.

By Connecting customers (dog owners) to quality information and services remotely via Twitter and Instagram. A customer is assured of acquiring the particular breed listed by the company before delivery.

Apparently, a low tone of local providers before the lockdown used to promise particular breeds, but then, deliver a breed that later shows its true bloodline months if not years later.

But with Paws 4 Uganda, existing customer complaints and reviews on their Digital Channels help other would-be clients to know the brand’s anticipated quality gauge.

At the moment, Paws has triggered growth on their Channels with customer-customer recommendations and reviews taking a lion’ share. It’s to this that the company could soon become Uganda’s only online Pet store as inked by the founders.

The company takes orders on Twitter, and Instagram where customers submit orders by sending messages to the brand’s pages. In a similar fashion, WhatsApp is also leveraged by the company to keep communication lines with customers open at all times for instant feedback and submission of complaints.

Furthermore, depending on the demand trail, Paws 4 Uganda could soon join the eCommerce space with a custom portal for customers to easily place orders and still benefit from free delivery offers. 

In a nutshell, Paws 4Uganda is one of the unique niche-specific solutions that have leveraged current business models powered by the Web to still serve customers the same way they did before the COVID19 Pandemic.

Editor’s Note: To Order for a Pet: Simply Follow Paws4Ug on Twitter, and Instagram for quality breed orders

Exemplary businesses that were previously not online, have now acquired a digital presence in order to reach, and serve their clients. This has seen more businesses become digital-centric to offer flexibility to their workforces, as well as adopt new systems to support their nature of work.

Last Week, MTN Uganda hosted a Webinar to discuss the new and emerging business models amidst the COVID19 Pandemic.

The Webinar was hosted by Dennis Musinguzi-The MTN Uganda senior Manager for products and services, Christopher Ssali -MTN Liberia Mobile Financial Services General manager, and the Eversend Fintech App CEO, Stone Atwine.

During the Webinar, Dennis Musinguzi said that, although businesses suffered a lot at the beginning of the Covid19 lockdown, they have ensured their continuity by going digital, and serving their customers through social media channels.

Fresh food markets suffered the most during lockdown. However, they went digital and started doing home deliveries. They are now in business.

Dennis Musinguzi – Senior Manager for Products and Services, MTN Uganda

New Business models relying on the Cashless evolution

Likely, Christopher Ssali noted that, there has been an observed change in payment habits over the last months as people are opting for contactless payment options more than ever before.

“Covid19 brings a new opportunity; previously more people felt more secure with cash. But after the pandemic, more people feel secure with payment options such as Mobile Money

Christopher Ssali – Acting General Manager Financial Services, MTN Liberia

He further noted that, the paradigm shift in the forms of payment has led to a Mobile Money evolution, and as such, significantly reduced the need to use cash in the business value chain.

In resonance with Ssali, Stone Atwine inked that, the increase in mobile money usage has kept businesses afloat by enabling them to transact during the pandemic. Not only through transaction free payments with services like Momo Pay and Airtel Money Pay, but also the rise of Smartphone App-based channels.

Borrowing credence from his company ‘EverSend’, Atwine said that companies should embrace new operational models in order to survive the adverse effects of the pandemic.

“We are trying to do things that have not been done yet. For instance, we are now doing cross-border eCommerce, changing our product designs to include items such as donations and causes to help people raise funds for specific causes especially during these hard times,” Atwine said.

Stone Atwine – CEO, EverSend Payments App

With the COVID19 Pandemic shaping the business sphere with new operation models. It’s now clear than ever before, that digital is the way to go for businesses to not only communicate better, but also leverage the fate of emerging technologies as discussed during the MTN Webinar.

Although the Huawei ban was effected in May 2019, it’s operations trend has not been greatly affected, since it has managed to thrive without Google Mobile services on its Smartphones, but still maintained its position as the 2^nd best manufacturer in the World.

Initially, the Trump administration banned Huawei citing cybersecurity, national security, and digital economy risks. With the new extension, no direct reasons have been stated implying they remain constant.

Likely, ZTE being another Chinese based IT equipment brand, it also faces an extension of its ban in the US. For Huawei, the ban has only affected its market presence in the region, but its worldwide operations continue.

As a leader in the 5G development, Huawei has continued to plan and develop networks in various countries like the UK, on top of preparing telcos in like Safaricom in Kenya, SouthAfrica among others.

However, with the new extension of Huawei’s ban from operating within US boundaries, it means future Huawei phones will continue riding on a custom operating system with popular Google services like YouTube, Gmail, and many others missing as default services.

As Huawei revealed to Android Authority that the restrictions tied have a low margin effect and instead lead to higher 5G acquisition for the US. We expect Huawei to continue developing custom solutions as it has always done since May 2019.