Continuous innovation: securing our competitive edge through technological breakthroughs
On September 29, 2026, Richard Yu, Executive Director, Chairman of the Investment Review Board, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Consumer BG, talked with journalists from some international media outlets about Huawei’s consumer business and HarmonyOS ecosystem.The following is a summary of the roundtable:Richard Yu: I joined Huawei in 1993.
That was 33 years ago.At the time, the company had just a few hundred people.
Right now, we have more than 200,000 employees, and almost half of them are engaged in R&D.We have continued to increase investment into the core technologies of the ICT domain and basic research, which has translated into robust core capabilities, extensive intellectual property, and a vast patent portfolio, and helped us achieve a series of breakthroughs in technological innovation.As the world enters the AI era, even more innovation and investment are needed.
Huawei is continuing to forge ahead.When I first joined the company, I worked on developing our first-generation program-controlled switch.Later on, I participated in the establishment of Huawei’s wireless communications business, which started with GSM.
Over the last 10-plus years, I’ve been mainly responsible for running Huawei’s consumer business.This is also the long-term strategy for our consumer business over the next 10 years.We have launched a broad series of products and solutions, including smartphones, PCs, tablets, wearables, TWS audio products, Smart TVs, home routers, and smart home control solutions.
We have also launched intelligent electric vehicles together with our partners.Underlying these products and solutions are Huawei’s chip hardware platform and HarmonyOS that has been developed on this platform.
We use HarmonyOS to support all the smart devices and smart hardware across all scenarios, and it is another OS ecosystem after iOS from Apple and Android from Google.Huawei started the development of HarmonyOS in 2019 and now it powers over 90 ...