Huawei Claims 50 5G Commercial Contracts Worldwide
Periandro Hawkins
* Ericsson claimed 170 commercial 5G contracts, most notably 109 live 5G networks in 48 countries. The company reached a key benchmark in December 2021, becoming the first system vendor to reach 100 5G live networks.
At Huawei's April 2021 Global Analyst Summit, the vendor cited 50 commercial 5G contracts but also claimed to have built over 140 5G networks in 59 countries. Then, as now, no breakout of mobile operator versus enterprise customers was provided by the vendor. But even with Huawei's customer losses due to geopolitical pressures from the U.S. and Western-allied countries, it is safe to estimate that Huawei has approximately 100 mobile operator customers worldwide. However, with Huawei not disclosing an official operator count, Ericsson was able to lay claim to being the first vendor to reach 100 5G operator accounts.
Meanwhile, Ericsson had another strong year on the 5G customer acquisition front. As of this writing, Ericsson claimed 170 commercial 5G contracts, most notably 109 live 5G networks in 48 countries. Ericsson reached a key benchmark in December 2021, becoming the first system vendor to reach 100 5G live networks. This makes sense as in August 2020, Ericsson was also the first vendor to reach 100 commercial contracts. Ericsson's customer milestones are a direct reflection of its success in every global region, including China. The presence of western vendors in China, however, is likely to be limited moving forward; during 2021 the Chinese government implemented retaliatory measures to counter Western-government restrictions on Chinese-branded 5G equipment.
Along with Ericsson, Nokia Corporation has also generated increasing traction in the global 5G infrastructure market. As of this writing, Nokia claims 214 commercial 5G deals and 74 live 5G networks supported. This includes 96 5G contracts with service providers, specifically, 15 in the Americas, 46 in Europe, 26 in Asia-Pacific and nine in the Middle East/Africa. On the technology research and development front, Nokia also reached an important milestone for the company in November 2021, with 4,000 patent families rated as standard essential patents to 5G. Nokia asserts that this ranks the company No. 1 in 5G patents.
TAIPEI -- Huawei Technologies, the world's top telecom equipment maker, on Thursday said it had secured more than 90 commercial 5G contracts worldwide, an increase of nearly 30 from last year despite the relentless pressure from U.S. authorities.
Huawei's announcement is an apparent attempt to rebut Ericsson, the Chinese company's biggest rival, as the Swedish manufacturer last week said it leads 5G commercialization with 79 contracts as of the end of last year.
Huawei had signed more than 3,000 commercial contracts for industrial 5G applications by the end of the year. Over 700 cities and 267 Fortune Global 500 companies worldwide had chosen Huawei as their partner for digital transformation by the end of the year, along with over 30,000 partners in the government and enterprise market, which included over 20,000 sales partners, 1,800 solution partners, 6,200 service and operation partners, and 2,000 talent alliances. Large-scale replication of 5GtoB solutions flourished through more than 3,000 digital transformation projects in eight industries. Huawei Cloud and its partners operated 65 availability zones worldwide, covering more than 170 countries and regions. Huawei Digital Power helped customers generate 482.9 billion kWh of green power and save about 14.2 billion kWh of electricity. These efforts have resulted in a reduction of nearly 230 million tons in CO2 emissions, equivalent to planting 320 million trees. HarmonyOS was deployed on more than 220 million Huawei devices, with over 730 million monthly active users, making it the world's fastest-growing mobile device operating system. HMS Core 6 was also launched, containing 69 kits (including 13 kits with cross-OS capabilities) and 21,738 APIs in seven domains (Graphics, Media, AI, etc.). By the end of the year, more than 5.4 million developers worldwide had joined Huawei's developer alliance, and over 187,000 apps have been integrated with HMS Core, 147% more than in 2020. More than 300 companies up and down the value chain became new partners of Huawei. We had launched more than 30 intelligent automotive components.
Huawei supported stable operations for 1,500+ carrier networks across 170+ countries and regions, and Huawei's 5G networks ranked high in multiple third-party tests on 5G network experience in large cities. Huawei participated in 3,000+ innovation projects worldwide and worked with carriers and partners to sign 1,000+ 5GtoB project contracts, spanning 20+ industries. Huawei's AirPON solution was commercially deployed by over 30 carriers around the world, leveraging wireless sites and optical fiber resources to make site acquisition much easier and support quick home network coverage. The RuralStar series solutions provided mobile internet services to 50+ million people living in remote areas in 60+ countries and regions. Huawei was joined by 30,000 partners to serve the enterprise market, including 22,000 sales partners, 1,600 solution partners, 5,400 service and operation partners, and 1,600 talent alliances. Huawei worked with partners to explore and apply Intelligent Twins in over 600 scenarios, covering sectors such as government, public utilities, transportation, manufacturing, energy, finance , healthcare, and scientific research. Huawei Certifications were issued to over 400,000 engineers, with over 13,000 receiving the Huawei Certified ICT Expert (HCIE) certification.Networks built by Huawei have proven instrumental to many carriers' best-in-class performance in LTE/5G network assessments. Huawei was once again named a leader in 5G RAN and LTE RAN, ranking first in all criteria categories of GlobalData's assessments. Huawei's PowerStar solutions were commercialized in 400,000+ sites across China to help customers save 200 million kWh of electricity each year. HUAWEI CLOUD launched 220+ cloud services and 210 solutions, and earned over 80 industry-recognized security certifications worldwide. It worked with 19,000+ partners and brought together 1.6 million developers. 4,000+ applications were launched on the HUAWEI CLOUD Marketplace. Over one billion Huawei devices were used worldwide, including 730+ million smartphones. 120,000+ apps were integrated with HMS Core and more than 2.3 million developers registered with Huawei's developers' alliance, including 300,000 developers outside China. 10 times more apps were launched outside China on the AppGallery than in 2019, making HMS the world's third largest mobile app ecosystem.
35 carriers used Huawei's B.E.S.T. Network solution for 5G to launch commercial 5G services. Huawei and Honor smartphones together occupied 17.6% of the global market share, making Huawei the world's second-biggest smartphone brand, and the largest provider of 5G smartphones. Over 700 cities, 228 Fortune Global 500 companies, and 58 Fortune 100 companies chose Huawei as their digital transformation partner. HUAWEI CLOUD offered more than 200 cloud services and 190 solutions, with over 3 million enterprise users and developers developing products and solutions with HUAWEI CLOUD. Huawei launched the Kunpeng 920 Arm-based CPU as well as the Kunpeng-powered TaiShan series servers and cloud services. The AI-Native database GaussDB and FusionStorage 8.0 launched as the industry's highest-performance distributed storage. Huawei announced its computing strategy to usher in an age of exploration for the computing industry along with the Atlas 900, the world's fastest AI training cluster, and HUAWEI CLOUD's Ascend-based cluster services. Huawei revealed its Intelligent OptiX Network strategy, aiming to work with upstream and downstream partners to redefine the optical network industry. Huawei launched its intelligent, distributed, next-generation operating system, HarmonyOS, which can run on multiple devices to provide a seamless experience to consumers in the all-scenario, intelligent era. Huawei opened HMS to developers around the world, allowing them to quickly and conveniently access the HMS ecosystem for app innovation and ecosystem resource sharing. HMS Core integrated over 55,000 apps worldwide.AppGallery was made available in more than 170 countries and regions, attracting over 400 million monthly active users.
More than 1,000 vendors joined Huawei as partners to build a robust IoT ecosystem. Huawei signed more than 350 NFV and 380 SDN commercial contracts worldwide, and deployed more than 30 commercial air interface CloudAIR (cloud-based wireless) networks. 5G pre-commercial tests were conducted with more than 30 leading carriers in more than 10 cities around the world, surpassing all ITU performance requirements. 197 companies on the Fortune Global 500 list and 45 of the top 100 enterprises chose Huawei as their partner for digital transformation. The Huawei and Honor brands worked together to achieve rapid growth in the consumer market. Huawei shipped 153 million smartphones, securing more than 10% of the global market share , making the company one of the top three phone makers in the world and a market leader in China. The HUAWEI Mate 10 smartphone became the first smartphone embedded with an artificial intelligence (AI) chipset on the market.Huawei's global brand awareness increased to 86%, up from 81% in 2016. The number of consumers considering a Huawei device in non-Chinese markets saw a 100% YoY increase. Huawei established its Cloud Business Unit (now Huawei Cloud). At the end of the year, Huawei's cloud service portfolio consisted of 99 services across 14 major categories. In addition, over 50 solutions were launched for manufacturing, healthcare, e-commerce, connected vehicle, SAP, HPC, and IoT applications. The Enterprise Intelligence (EI) platform was launched, combining Huawei's years of AI expertise and best practices with enterprise application scenarios. Huawei continued to build an open, collaborative cloud ecosystem that thrived on shared success and was joined by 2,000 cloud service partners and four major strategic partners.
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